Sports Medicine Research Updates

This network meta-analysis of 63 randomized trials (4,235 patients) comparing interscalene (ISB), suprascapular (SSB), supraclavicular (SCB), combined block techniques, and general anesthesia for shoulder arthroscopy found ISB most consistent at reducing 24-hour opioid consumption. Combined approaches provided superior pain control at specific early time points (eg, SCB+axillary at 2 h, SSB+costoclavicular at 6 h, SSB at 12 h), and at 24 h SCB+axillary ranked highest though differences from ISB were modest.

In a propensity-matched cohort of patients undergoing primary hip arthroscopy for femoroacetabular impingement, 94 patients with confirmed subspine impingement who received arthroscopic subspine decompression (SSD) were matched 1:2 to 188 controls without SSI. SSD patients showed significant improvements in all patient-reported outcomes at minimum 5-year follow-up (p < .0001), with comparable rates of MCID and PASS and similar survivorship (5.3% converted to total hip arthroplasty/hip resurfacing); time to revision arthroscopy was longer in the SSD group (52.0 vs 32.8 months, p = .04).

Fifty-four manuscripts submitted to a high-impact sports medicine journal were reviewed by a locally deployed LLM and compared with 139 pooled human reviews and final editorial decisions. Pooled human reviewers showed fair agreement with final decisions (κ = 0.181, 42.4% agreement) while the AI showed slight, nonsignificant agreement (κ = 0.126, 37.0% agreement); however, when the AI recommended rejection or cascade its positive predictive value for a final rejection/cascade decision was 90.5% (specificity 81.8%), suggesting potential utility as a first-pass screening tool but not a replacement for human reviewers.