Dr. Mark Cohen Featured in National Coverage of Red Sox Star's Rare Injury

When the Boston Globe needed an expert who could explain a hand injury unlike anything seen before in professional baseball, the call went to Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush's own Dr. Mark Cohen.

Boston Red Sox outfielder Roman Anthony, one of the most promising young hitters in the league and once considered a contender for the American League MVP award, has been sidelined since early May. After weeks of conflicting reports about the nature of his injury, the team confirmed that Anthony is managing a partially torn ligament in the CMC joint of his ring finger.

It's a diagnosis that surprised even Cohen, who has spent 32 years operating on hands and elbows at Rush. "I actually have never heard of a ring finger isolated CMC ligament tear," he told Globe reporter Alex Speier in the feature, which Sports Illustrated later picked up. Ligament tears in the hand almost always show up at the knuckle or in the smaller finger joints, he explained, not at the CMC level, and a search of the medical literature for a ring finger ligament sprain turns up almost nothing.

It's the kind of case with no real precedent, which is exactly why a national paper went looking for someone who's spent three decades in the OR rather than a textbook.