• Eur J Trauma Emerg Surg · Dec 2021

    Functional and early weight-bearing protocol for achilles tendon ruptures: a retrospective study.

    • Stijn Gillissen, Ilan Halperin, Vinay Balesar, Erwin Gorter, and Alexander Greeven.
    • Department of Surgery, Haga Teaching Hospital and Juliana Children's Hospital, Els Borst Eijlersplein 275, 2545 AA, The Hague, The Netherlands. stijngillissen@gmail.com.
    • Eur J Trauma Emerg Surg. 2021 Dec 1; 47 (6): 2049-2054.

    PurposeConservative treatment of achilles tendon rupture (ATR) might be favoured in centres with an early weight-bearing protocol, but no consensus exists on the clear definition of an early weight-bearing protocol. The aim of this study is to evaluate the introduction of an early weight-bearing conservative treatment protocol in patients with ATR compared to patients without this protocol.MethodsA single-centre retrospective study was performed. All patients presenting with an ATR during a 10-year period were included. Between January 1st 2008 and December 31st 2015, all patients were included for either operative or conservative treatment without an early weight-bearing protocol (non-EWB). Between January 1st 2016 and 30th June 2019, patients were, primarily, treated conservatively with early weight-bearing protocol (EWB). A primary-outcome parameter was re-rupture, and secondary-outcome parameters were treatment-related complications.ResultsIn the period 2008-2015, 246 patients were treated with non-EWB. In the period 2016-2019, 58 patients were treated conservatively with EWB. No significant differences were found in re-rupture rates between non-EWB (5.3%) and conservative EWB (6.9%) (p = 0.536) or conservative non-EWB (9.4%) and conservative EWB (6.9%) (p = 0.283). Pulmonary embolism (1.0%) and deep venous thrombosis (1.0%) were observed in operative non-EWB patients. In conservative EWB patients, superficial pressure ulcers (5.2%) and treatment failure (5.2%) were observed.ConclusionConservative treatment of ATR with an early weight-bearing protocol showed similar re-rupture rates and complication rates compared to conservative and operative treatments without an early weight-bearing protocol.© 2020. Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…