What ‘loose bodies in his elbow’ means for Tarik Skubal’s Tigers injury originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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These aren’t words you hear elsewhere, just baseball, and not in a good context.
Nope, only with injuries, like Tarik Skubal’s as the Detroit Tigers ace goes on the Injured List. Why? He’s got “loose bodies in his elbow,” according to The Athletic’s Cody Stavenhagen.
Yep, that’s really the description, “loose bodies.”
Confused? That’s totally fair.
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What are ‘loose bodies’ in baseball elbow injury?
“Loose bodies” are essentially elbow chips.
They’re often called “chips in the elbow,” according to Dr. Christopher Ahmad, with “loose bodies” being the more official medical term.
They can form form stress on the bone at the back of the elbow, called the olecranon, according to Ahmad.
When those bone spurs crack, they can become loose, thus “loose bodies.”
That can cause pain in the elbow, and if the bone chips are bad enough, surgery can be required to remove them arthroscopically.
Ahmad adds in his description of the injury that bone chips can be related to a UCL injury (the ligament involved in Tommy John surgery), but that they don’t have to be.
It’s obviously not an ideal situation for a pitcher to be in, but it can be come back from, and on a much shorter timeline than a torn UCL, so potentially catching this early can be a good outcome.