00:00This is the Injury Report, presented by NYU Langone Health.
00:05Woosah!
00:06The Yankees can breathe a slight sigh of relief after an MRI scan found a little inflammation
00:12and soreness in the patella in George Lombard Jr.'s knee.
00:17So in today's Injury Report, we're talking with Dr. Julia Iafrati, Sports Orthopedic
00:23Specialist at NYU Langone, to get an idea when the young shortstop can return to play.
00:28I hope you like my woosah there, Doc, because a lot of Yankees fans want this guy back out
00:33on the field.
00:34Appreciate you hopping on with us today.
00:37The imaging came back clean, no structural damage, but he's dealing with patellar inflammation
00:43and soreness.
00:45So two things.
00:46Can you break down what's actually happening in the knee mechanically when a hitter tweaks
00:51it in that way?
00:52And what does no structural damage mean for the young shortstop?
00:58Yeah, great question, Brandon.
01:00Great to be here again, as usual.
01:03Basically, if your viewers look back at the video, we see that back leg rotating and it
01:09looks almost like his cleat maybe got caught.
01:12And so a baseball swing is going to load the leg really hard.
01:15You plant, you kind of put through that rotate, you drive the knee forward in a really quick
01:19millisecond.
01:20There's two ways this could be going.
01:23One could be a cumulative load problem.
01:25So he's been loading that tendon, that patellar tendon over and over and over again, causing
01:30it to kind of get a little bit more damage to it.
01:33Not necessarily causing any big tears, but maybe little micro tears in the tissue.
01:38The other potential option for him to have this kind of problem is getting cartilage irritation.
01:48So there's cartilage on the back of your kneecap, kind of like my gel nail polish, if you will.
01:52I'm sure the women watching are going to understand this better than the men.
01:55But hey, we have cartilage that has this coating on the back of our kneecap.
02:00And that can actually get like a shearing injury from that quick kind of rotation.
02:05So it's possible he tweaked the knee in that way.
02:07And that's kind of what we're seeing here.
02:09In terms of like no structural damage, it basically means that nothing's ruptured or torn, more
02:16like just tweaked or pinched, almost like biting the inside of your cheek and then, you
02:20know, trying to eat again and you keep redoing it.
02:23I'm sure all the good doctors over at NYU Langone have treated patients who dealt with patellar
02:29inflammation.
02:30So is there any difference in the pain and the swelling that they go through as well as their
02:36rehab compared to a pro athlete like George Lombard, Jr.?
02:42I really think the key note is that Lombard, Jr.
02:46is a pro athlete, right?
02:48So this is how he makes his money.
02:50This is his livelihood.
02:51Whereas the weekend warriors, this usually isn't their livelihood.
02:56And so they can take more time with the activity modification with the rehab, probably not
03:01needing to look at steroid injections that quickly.
03:03Uh, so it just depends.
03:06I take care of both athletes, right?
03:08I take care of professional athletes.
03:09I take care of the weekend warriors.
03:11I take care of the kids.
03:12Uh, the big thing here is, uh, making sure that people understand that sometimes it's
03:17okay to modify and drop back a little bit because this is not how you make your money.
03:22This is not your livelihood.
03:23It's very different for a professional athlete.
03:26Uh, so let's say.
03:30Okay.
03:30You
