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Differences in the Medical Advisability of Online Pitching Recommendations for Youth Softball Players Based on Website Source

BACKGROUND: Guidelines regarding injury prevention in fast-pitch softball pitchers have yet to be widely adopted, risking the online dissemination of misleading advice. PURPOSE/HYPOTHESIS: The purpose of this study was to assess the source and medical advisability of online pitching recommendations...

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Autores principales: Painter, David F., Byrne, Rory A., Dove, James H., Lin, Yang, Owens, Brett D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10387787/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37529530
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/23259671231182743
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author Painter, David F.
Byrne, Rory A.
Dove, James H.
Lin, Yang
Owens, Brett D.
author_facet Painter, David F.
Byrne, Rory A.
Dove, James H.
Lin, Yang
Owens, Brett D.
author_sort Painter, David F.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Guidelines regarding injury prevention in fast-pitch softball pitchers have yet to be widely adopted, risking the online dissemination of misleading advice. PURPOSE/HYPOTHESIS: The purpose of this study was to assess the source and medical advisability of online pitching recommendations for youth softball players and highlight the risk of misinformation. It was hypothesized that many popular websites would contain content discordant with current medical guidelines regarding windmill softball pitching recommendations. STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. METHODS: A Google search using the phrase “youth softball pitching recommendations” was performed. Up to 100 websites were extracted and analyzed for website source type (commercial, medical/educational, or athletic organization) and informational quality (advisable, neutral, or discordant). The latter was determined with respect to the STOP Sports Injuries guidelines for arm injury prevention in youth softball players. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to assess potential associations between website source type and the informational quality of content therein. RESULTS: A total of 86 websites were included in the analysis. Website source type was significantly predictive of informational quality (P = .018). Among the 3 source types, medical/educational websites had the highest proportion classified as advisable (12/24 [50.0%]) and the lowest proportion classified as discordant (3/24 [12.5%]). Only 17.6% (6/34) of commercial websites were advisable, and advisable websites as a whole were more likely to be from medical/educational sources than athletic organization (P = .016) or commercial (P = .026) sources. The advisability rate among all websites was 25.6% (22/86). Although there was a significant association between position in the search results (first 10 vs remaining 76) and website source type (P = .006), there was no association between position and informational quality (P = .116). The first 10 websites, which trended toward greater advisability than the remaining 76 websites (P = .060), were more likely than the remaining websites to be medical/educational sources (P = .002). CONCLUSION: Website source type was significantly predictive of medical advisability. Medical/educational websites were the most advisable, while commercial and athletic organization websites were especially poor in their advisability. The overall advisability rate was only 25.6%. When making recommendations to patients, sports medicine providers should highlight the prevalence of discordant online softball pitching guidelines and take the opportunity to share medically advisable resources.
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spelling pubmed-103877872023-08-01 Differences in the Medical Advisability of Online Pitching Recommendations for Youth Softball Players Based on Website Source Painter, David F. Byrne, Rory A. Dove, James H. Lin, Yang Owens, Brett D. Orthop J Sports Med Article BACKGROUND: Guidelines regarding injury prevention in fast-pitch softball pitchers have yet to be widely adopted, risking the online dissemination of misleading advice. PURPOSE/HYPOTHESIS: The purpose of this study was to assess the source and medical advisability of online pitching recommendations for youth softball players and highlight the risk of misinformation. It was hypothesized that many popular websites would contain content discordant with current medical guidelines regarding windmill softball pitching recommendations. STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. METHODS: A Google search using the phrase “youth softball pitching recommendations” was performed. Up to 100 websites were extracted and analyzed for website source type (commercial, medical/educational, or athletic organization) and informational quality (advisable, neutral, or discordant). The latter was determined with respect to the STOP Sports Injuries guidelines for arm injury prevention in youth softball players. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to assess potential associations between website source type and the informational quality of content therein. RESULTS: A total of 86 websites were included in the analysis. Website source type was significantly predictive of informational quality (P = .018). Among the 3 source types, medical/educational websites had the highest proportion classified as advisable (12/24 [50.0%]) and the lowest proportion classified as discordant (3/24 [12.5%]). Only 17.6% (6/34) of commercial websites were advisable, and advisable websites as a whole were more likely to be from medical/educational sources than athletic organization (P = .016) or commercial (P = .026) sources. The advisability rate among all websites was 25.6% (22/86). Although there was a significant association between position in the search results (first 10 vs remaining 76) and website source type (P = .006), there was no association between position and informational quality (P = .116). The first 10 websites, which trended toward greater advisability than the remaining 76 websites (P = .060), were more likely than the remaining websites to be medical/educational sources (P = .002). CONCLUSION: Website source type was significantly predictive of medical advisability. Medical/educational websites were the most advisable, while commercial and athletic organization websites were especially poor in their advisability. The overall advisability rate was only 25.6%. When making recommendations to patients, sports medicine providers should highlight the prevalence of discordant online softball pitching guidelines and take the opportunity to share medically advisable resources. SAGE Publications 2023-07-27 /pmc/articles/PMC10387787/ /pubmed/37529530 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/23259671231182743 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work as published without adaptation or alteration, without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Article
Painter, David F.
Byrne, Rory A.
Dove, James H.
Lin, Yang
Owens, Brett D.
Differences in the Medical Advisability of Online Pitching Recommendations for Youth Softball Players Based on Website Source
title Differences in the Medical Advisability of Online Pitching Recommendations for Youth Softball Players Based on Website Source
title_full Differences in the Medical Advisability of Online Pitching Recommendations for Youth Softball Players Based on Website Source
title_fullStr Differences in the Medical Advisability of Online Pitching Recommendations for Youth Softball Players Based on Website Source
title_full_unstemmed Differences in the Medical Advisability of Online Pitching Recommendations for Youth Softball Players Based on Website Source
title_short Differences in the Medical Advisability of Online Pitching Recommendations for Youth Softball Players Based on Website Source
title_sort differences in the medical advisability of online pitching recommendations for youth softball players based on website source
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10387787/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37529530
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/23259671231182743
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