Catcher's Mitts Don't Provide Adequate Protection

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Professional baseball players - catchers in particular - may experience significant injury to their catching hand, even when that hand is covered by a padded mitt, study findings show.

"Despite well-padded catchers' mitts and the use of additional padding, the catchers examined in this study continue to demonstrate changes to the gloved index finger consistent with trauma," study co-author Dr. T. Adam Ginn, of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina, said in a university statement.

"We found signs of early blood vessel damage that could lead to significant symptoms and could end a player's career," he added.

All baseball players are exposed to hand trauma, especially catchers, who receive as many as 150 pitches per game, with balls traveling faster than 90 miles per hour. With 162 scheduled games during a nine-month season, professional ball players repeatedly experience such exposure. Minor league players, however, may experience even more exposure, and injury, since they often play year round. Further, baseball players, in general, may have a higher risk of such injury than their fellow athletes.

"Professional baseball players may be exposed to more repetitive hand trauma than any other sport," co-author Dr. L. Andrew Koman, also of Wake Forest University, said in a statement.

Ginn, Koman and their colleagues investigated the amount of protection afforded by catcher's mitts and the types of injuries experienced by professional ball players during the 2001 season. The study included 15 pitchers, nine catchers, seven infielders and five outfielders from four teams.

A total of 11 players (31 percent) said they had, at some point in their career, felt pain, numbness, weakness or tingling in their hand, but catchers were more likely to report experiencing weakness, the researchers report in the Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery. Forty-four percent of catchers reported experiencing hand weakness, in comparison to 17 percent of the infielders and outfielders and 7 percent of pitchers.

Further, when the investigators studied the catchers separately, they found that such weakness, tingling and other hand symptoms were much more common for their gloved hand than for their throwing hand, despite their use of protective padding. In fact, eight of the nine catchers reported using additional padding in the form of a batting glove under their mitt.

Catchers also exhibited abnormal blood flow to their gloved hands and had significant enlargement of the index finger of the same hand, a sign of injury. In comparison to their throwing hand, the index finger of their gloved hand was two ring sizes larger on average. None of the other players experienced similar index finger enlargement.

One reason for the greater hand trauma among catchers is that most catchers catch pitches at the base of their glove's web, where many nerves and vessels are located, the researchers note. Pitchers and infielders/outfielders, in contrast, are known to catch balls in the actual webbing of the glove, away from the hand.

None of the hand trauma experienced by the study participants restricted their ability to perform their required duties as professional baseball players, the report indicates. It may have a significant long-term effect, however, including permanent circulation problems.

"We suspect that at least some of the players would demonstrate progressive decline eventually leading to additional numbness and tingling," Koman said.

SOURCE: Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery 2005.