What is Acute Wiiitis?
The term “wiiitis” was coined by Dr. Julio Bonis, a medical resident, after waking up one Sunday morning with intense pain in the right shoulder. He did not recall any recent injuries or trauma and had not participated in any sports or physical exercise recently. When he consulted a rheumatologist and the Patte’s test was positive, consistent with acute tendonitis isolated to the right infraspinatus.
Then he recalled his activities for the previous 24 hours and remembered that he had bought a new Nintendo Wii (pronounced “wee”) video-game system and had spent several hours playing the tennis video game.
With the Wii system, the player faces a video screen and moves a handheld controller (approximately 14.5 cm by 3.0 cm by 3.0 cm, with a weight of approximately 200 g) containing solid-state accelerometers and gyroscopes that sense three-dimensional spatial movements. In the tennis video game, the player makes the same arm movements as in a real game of tennis. If a player gets too engrossed, he may “play tennis” on the video screen for many hours. Unlike in the real sport, physical strength and endurance are not limiting factors. New England Journal of Medicine
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