Abstract
BackgroundThe incidences of tendon injuries in certain sections of human or animal populations such as athletes are high, but every human or animal, regardless of age or level of activity experiences some degree of tendon injury. In spite of the various investigations of injuries and treatment, comprehensive studies dealing with the histological, ultrastructural and biomechanical aspects of healing of load-bearing tendons are rare. This study was designed to compare the outcome of healing of the transverse sectioned superficial digital flexor tendon (SDFT) after 28 and 84 days post injury (DPI) in rabbits.MethodsForty white New Zealand mature female rabbits were randomly divided into two equal groups of 28 and 84 DPI After tenotomy and surgical repair of the left SDFT, the injured legs were casted for 14 days. The weight of the animals, tendon diameter, and clinical, radiographic and ultrasonographic evaluations were conducted at weekly intervals. The animals were euthanized on 28 and 84 DPI and the tendons were evaluated for histopathological, ultrastructural, biomechanical and percentage dry weight parameters.ResultsAlthough the clinical, ultrastructural, morphological and biomechanical properties of the injured tendons on day 84 showed a significant improvement compared to those of the 28 DPI, these parameters were still significantly inferior to their normal contra-lateral tendons.ConclusionsThis study showed that tendon healing is very slow and at 84 days post-injury the morphological and biomechanical parameters were still inferior to the normal tendons and many collagen fibrils still had the same diameter as those seen at 28 DPI.
Highlights
The incidences of tendon injuries in certain sections of human or animal populations such as athletes are high, but every human or animal, regardless of age or level of activity experiences some degree of tendon injury
A 2 cm longitudinal incision was made through the skin and subcutaneous tissue, approximately 0.5 cm distal to the gastrocnemius muscle and 0.5 cm above the calcaneal tuberosity (CT), and the calcaneal tendon (CCT) complex was exposed [7,8,12,17,24]
The results of the present study demonstrated that while the surgical protocol and time of immobilization was effective in improving the structural and physical characteristics of the experimentally induced transverse section superficial digital flexor tendon (SDFT) after 12 weeks post-injury, it strongly elucidated that the healing of the sharp ruptured tendons is quite slow and, despite intensive remodeling over the following months, complete regeneration of the tendon was not achieved
Summary
The incidences of tendon injuries in certain sections of human or animal populations such as athletes are high, but every human or animal, regardless of age or level of activity experiences some degree of tendon injury. There are many traumatic cases in veterinary medicine such as car accidents, hitting and other related conditions in which sharp and hard metal materials penetrate the skin and cut the intact tendons, resulting in tendon rupture [2,10,13] In another approach, in such cases of orthopedic surgery, for example, the internal fixation techniques to reduce fractures of the tibia or metatarsal bones, the surgeon should expose the fractured site in a manner that allows the fixation plate or other fixation materials to be implanted, implantation of the screws to be facilitated and the anatomical reduction of the fractured site to be achieved. During these procedures it is quite common to cut the intact tendons [13,14]
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