In the moments after I felt the pop in my left shoulder, the sensation I felt was not pain. It was panic. How exactly does a 40-year-old man explain to his wife that he might have torn his rotator cuff during a midnight game of Wii tennis?
Dr. Charles Young made me feel better without even examining me.
Late last year, Dr. Young, an orthopedic surgeon, spent about an hour experimenting with the balance games and strength-training exercises on his new Wii Fit. Running on a virtual trail. Slalom skiing. Walking on a tightrope. “They have this hula-hoop one where you’re supposed to spin yourself in a circle and try to get a high score,” said Dr. Young, who is completing a sports medicine fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic. “I was really hurting.”
In the operating room the next day he commiserated with several nurses who confessed that they had, at least figuratively, already felt his pain.
To say that Wii injuries are an epidemic would be an overstatement, but they are proliferating along with the popular video-game system. Interviews with orthopedists and sports medicine physicians revealed few serious injuries, but rather a phenomenon more closely resembling a spreading national ache: patients of all ages complaining of strains and swelling related to their use — and overuse — of the Wii.
Call it Wii Shoulder. Or Wii Knee. If there is an epidemic of anything, it probably falls under a broader label: Nintendinitis.
