Clinical Research
Located at the Orthopaedic Institute at Mission Bay, The UCSF Sports Medicine Clinical Research Group performs research on many prevalent disabling conditions such as rotator cuff tears, shoulder arthritis, ACL injuries, shoulder instability, cartilage restoration, hip labral tears, concussions, and running injuries.
The research team has experts in the field of sports medicine who have performed state of the art research with clinical trials (randomized, prospective studies, cohort studies), health policy analysis, systemic reviews, and radiographic analyses. The research group is part of multiple multi-center groups evaluating ACL injuries, shoulder instability, and shoulder reconstruction procedures.
Recently published studies include studies on:
- The effect of pre-operative health and mental status on shoulder function after shoulder replacement.
- The importance of surgical stabilization on first time shoulder dislocations in a multi-center national study.
- Novel techniques to decrease pain after shoulder replacement.
- Outcomes after revision ACL reconstruction
Translational Research
he focus of the sports medicine translational research team is to use a ‘bench to bedside’ approach to investigate the basic mechanisms of injury and repair, and evaluate techniques to improve outcomes by understanding the cellular, molecular, and biomechanical changes that occur after sports injuries.
Rotator Cuff and Muscle Injuries: Drs. Brian Feeley and Xuhui Liu are studying the stem cell changes that occur after rotator cuff injuries. As patients have rotator cuff tears, the muscle can undergo characteristic changes in the muscle where the muscle becomes smaller (muscle atrophy) and transforms in part in to fat (Fatty infiltration). The research team, a collaborative effort between UCSF Orthopaedic Surgery, UCSF Stem Cell Center, and the SF VA hospital, is studying how certain stem cells can be stimulated to ‘turn bad fat into good fat’ and improve muscle quality and function after a rotator cuff repair. The study is funded by the NIH and VA. (
Biomechanics of Injury Patterns: Led by Drs. Lotz, Ma, and Feeley, the Sports Medicine research team is using low cost motion analysis cameras in clinic to evaluate biomechanical motion patterns that can predict lower extremity injury such as ACL tears and early arthritis, and study how to improve outcomes and return to play status after knee surgery and ACL reconstruction. The novel technology, developed in part at UCSF, is also used to follow shoulder reconstruction patients after surgery to help provide more clinically relevant information on motion patterns and outcome
Advanced Imaging Research
Using state of the art MRI techniques and through a long standing collaboration with researchers in the UCSF Department of Radiology, the sports medicine faculty have developed innovative techniques to follow outcomes after ACL reconstruction and meniscus injury and repair as well has hip labral repair and reconstruction.
ACL Reconstruction: Under the direction of C. Benjamin Ma, MD, current research focuses on evaluating the long term outcomes of ACL reconstruction on knee kinematics and cartilage health. The research team has used high resolution cartilage mapping to study the outcomes of ACL reconstruction and its relationship to cartilage health. Dr. Drew Lansdown is using MRI mapping strategies to evaluate ACL graft health after reconstruction to help predict graft health and return to play criteria.
Hip preservation: Director of the UCSF Hip Preservation Center Dr. Alan Zhang is currently evaluating how arthroscopic hip labral repair and reconstruction can affect cartilage changes and prevent degenerative changes in patients with labral tears and femoroacetabular impingement.