Clinical and ultrasound follow-up of patients operated for subcutaneous rupture of the Achilles tendon

Thanks to its good long-term results, surgery is the method of choice to treat subcutaneous ruptures of the Achilles tendon. Reconstructed tendons present typical morphological and functional US patterns which depend partly on the kind of surgical reconstruction and partly on the time passed since surgery. The authors report the results of the clinical and US follow-up of a series of 62 surgical patients treated in 7 years for the subcutaneous rupture of the Achilles tendon. The patients were 55 men and 7 women, whose mean age was 36 years (range: 25-65 years). The left-hand side was affected in 38 patients and the right-hand side in 24 patients. All patients were operated on using an end-to-end suture and reinforcement plastic surgery pulling down a gastrocnemius tendon flap. To homogenize the results, all the US exams were performed by the same operator, in the presence of the orthopedic specialist and under the same conditions: both the involved and the contralateral Achilles tendon...