Upper extremity orthopedic softball injuries presenting to the emergency department: epidemiology across the lifespan

Softball is a popular lifetime sport due to its inclusion of both fastpitch and slowpitch varieties, although associated injuries are common. To compare softball injury rates across patient sex, age, race, injury location, mechanism, and activity. The National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) was queried for all upper extremity softball injuries in patients 10–85+ years old presenting to United States emergency departments between 2012 and 2021. Significantly more of the 178,303 total weighted upper extremity injuries occurred in female (68.1%) than male (31.9%) athletes (p