Achilles Ruptures in Professional Athletes

Surgically, Achilles ruptures may be treated with different techniques, including end-to-end open repair, percutaneous repair, reconstruction with advancement, or tendon transfer.  Postoperatively, the rehabilitation protocol is also critical to the athletes return to play, particularly with regard to the timeline. There is no one established protocol, therefore, details concerning which protocol is used would be useful in the analysis of how quickly the athlete returned, any setbacks encountered, and to what level of performance was ultimately achieved. A lack of complication data also inhibits true data analysis as an unforeseen issue, whether related to the Achilles injury or not, may prolong an athlete’s timeline in returning to play but would likely not be made public information for inclusion in the retrospective studies [4].