Did you know April happens to be pickleball month? Pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in the country, and its popularity in Hawaiʻi is evident just about everywhere.
The Conversation recently talked to Kaiser Permanente Hawaii sports medicine Dr. Benjamin Chun about the rise of injuries as more and more people pick up the sport.
He said pickleball players usually have knee and shoulder issues, just like in similar sports.
"Most of the knee issues that we see, I'd say we see probably less acute injuries and it's more kind of like exacerbation of underlying things, mostly osteoarthritis or degenerative meniscus tears," he said. "Shoulders is typically more overuse as opposed to like acute injury. So that's going to be more of your rotator cuff tendinitis-type stuff and impingement syndromes."
He said emergency room colleagues have reported pickleball players with wrist fractures and ankle sprains.
"Even though like we see more injuries related to pickleball participation, we don't view it as a bad thing. We're just happy to see people getting excited about stuff because at least half the people that are going to pickleball used to be doing something else, and they kind of got away from doing regular exercise because maybe they developed a little arthritis, and it was harder to play tennis, or it was harder to play racquetball," Chun added.
Chun said playing pickleball is a net benefit to someone's health and well-being.
This story aired on The Conversation on April 10, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
