Carlos Alcaraz fears the worst: surgeon warns Jannik Sinner’s rival
These are complicated days for Carlos Alcaraz, who was forced to skip the Madrid tournament due to a wrist problem that could push him to forfeit Rome and Roland Garros as well. The Murcia tennis player had a brace on his arm during the Laureus ceremony and has not ruled out skipping the Paris Slam as well in order to recover as best he can from the problem.
To the French newspaper L’Equipe, Dr. Marc Juvenspan, a surgeon who specializes in hand and shoulder problems, explained how it is difficult to determine the extent of the injury and recovery time: “A priori, it is either a tendinitis of the ECU (extensor ulnaris carpi), or a lesion of the TFCC, the triangular ligament that is located inside the wrist and connects the ulna and radius. Statistically, it’s one of the two, because we’ve seen him wearing a brace, and in a tennis player who plays a two-handed backhand, these are frequent pathologies. Whether it’s a small triangular ligament injury or inflammation of the tendon, it can actually occur as a result of trauma. You have to look at tendonitis as a series of repeated microtraumas, which can “wake up” after a single blow, even if for weeks or months you hadn’t felt anything.”
“You have to wait for it to “deflate” thanks to immobilization, which puts the wrist completely at rest, and eventually you can try an infiltration if it doesn’t go away. This is not necessarily the option of choice in this case, however, because infiltration weakens the tendon. On the contrary, if it is a triangular ligament injury, infiltration works very well and without risk of tendon rupture, and you can even return to competition a week later, sometimes with a pain-free wrist.”
Juvespan explains how wrist injuries give little certainty: “With the wrist you never have certainty. Among other things, there is no specific surgical treatment that works really well. With an infiltration it can resolve, but it can also last a long time and be very uncomfortable. If it is ECU tendonitis, it is bothersome, but it heals with time and physiotherapy. The problem is chronicity. That is, it hurts a lot at first, but then the risk is to have little pains that persist. And it can last three weeks as well as six months, or even longer.”
The expert cannot comment on Alcaraz’s participation in Roland Garros, which the tennis player won last year in the final against Jannik Sinner: “It’s impossible to say now whether or not he will be able to play at Roland Garros. When he resumes training, it will be seen whether he will have persistent pain or a feeling of apprehension that will limit him.”
