Today’s article “Distal biceps ruptures in National Football League players: return to play and performance analysis” by McGinnis et al. is from Rutgers University.
Distal bicep ruptures often occur in males 40-50 years old. The ruptures often occur from a strong eccentric force to the elbow against a contracted bicep muscle. Surgery is often performed to restore supination strength of the wrist and to a lesser extent, flexion strength of the elbow.
The authors were able to use publicly available reports to identify 35 distal biceps ruptures from 2000-2016. These players were matched to a control group.
The most common position was offensive line (14 of 35). The average time to return to play was 324.7 +/- 112 days and was defined as playing a regular season NFL game. Thirty three of the thirty-five (94%) players were able to return to sport. Most positions did not see a difference in games played per season or career length after injury except for OL that did see fewer games played per season. Both defensive ends and linebackers had nearly identical pre- and post-surgical performance scores.
Interesting notes include that the study showed an average age at rupture of 28.5 +/- 3.5 years being significantly lower than the typical age for distal biceps rupture. They also showed the average number of seasons at rupture at 8.3 +/- 3.3 for defensive players and 9.6 +/- 2.4 for offensive players. The number of seasons played at rupture is significantly longer than the average length of NFL career and this may simply result in increased stress that the tendon sees over time.
There are two common approaches two distal biceps repair, single incision vs two incision techniques, with various fixation strategies. This study was not able to look at the techniques used. However, this study is good news overall showing that should a player have this injury they will very likely be able to return to play.
