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Young men and elderly women may be at highest risk for shoulder dislocations
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A recent study published in The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery indicates that most shoulder dislocations occur in young men during sports activities and that elderly women have a high rate of shoulder dislocation.
“We were not too surprised to find the high number of young males dislocating their shoulders during athletic activity,” Brett Owens, MD, a co-author of the study and orthopedic surgeon at Keller Army Hospital in West Point, New York, stated in an American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgery press release “However, the rate of shoulder dislocations among elderly women was higher than we had previously assumed.”
More dislocations
Owens and his colleagues studied 8,940 shoulder dislocations in patients presenting at 100 hospital emergency rooms across the United States from 2002 to 2006. They queried the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System for the injuries and then analyzed patient and injury characteristics.
The investigators found an overall incidence rate of 23.9 shoulder dislocations per 100,000 person years – twice the previously reported rate.
Elderly women
Of all dislocations, they found that 71.8% occurred in men. They also discovered that 46.8% were in patients between the ages of 15 and 29 years and 48.3% of dislocations occurred during sports or recreation.
Falls accounted for the most frequent cause of dislocations, with 47.7% of these falls occurring at home and 33.6% occurring at recreation or sports sites.
In women, higher dislocation rates were seen among those aged 80 to 90 years. The investigators attributed this increased rate to falls at home.
- References:
www.aaos.org
Zacchilli, MA; Owens, BD. Epidemiology of shoulder dislocations presenting to emergency departments in the United States. J. Bone Jt. Surg. (Am.) 2010; 92:542-549.
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