Dr. ElAttrache weighs in on the value of the revolutionary procedure continues to have across baseball.
Article Link: Tommy John surgery continues to save baseball careers 50 years after its debut: ‘Revolutionary’ | Fox News
It’s been nearly 50 years since one of the biggest advancements in sports medicine: Tommy John surgery.
On Sept. 25, 1974, Dr. Frank Jobe first performed the operation on Tommy John, a professional baseball pitcher who played on Major League Baseball (MLB) teams between 1963 and 1989.
During the surgery, Jobe reconstructed a torn ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in John’s left arm.
It was a pioneering achievement for Jobe and a lifeline for John, who went from a career-ending injury to 14 more years in the majors — and an eponymous connection to sports medicine that would live on long past his playing days.
Since then, Tommy John surgery — more formally known as ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) reconstruction, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine — has been performed on many other baseball players.
Those players include David Wells (1985), John Smoltz (2000), Stephen Strasburg (2010), Rich Hill (2011), Shohei Ohtani (2018), Justin Verlander (2020) and Bryce Harper (2022), to name a few, according to MLB.
“I wouldn’t still be standing here if it weren’t for a surgery like this,” Chicago White Sox pitcher Michael Kopech said, according to the Associated Press. “It’s doubled the length of my career.”
“If you put it in dollars and cents, I think there’s no question that Tommy John is the most valuable reconstructive procedure there is,” Dr. Neal ElAttrache, the head team physician for the Dodgers and the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams, told the AP.
Despite its high success rate, the main challenge associated with the surgery has been the extended recovery and rehabilitation process.
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