An Achilles injury used to be career-ending, but new techniques in surgery and rehab are changing the narrative.
Brett Coomer/Staff photographer
That rate has substantially improved due to a shift in rehabilitation philosophy that became standardized within the last 20 years. The main question in orthopedic circles used to be whether an athlete should rest for several weeks after sustaining an Achilles injury or begin rehab sooner.revealed athletes actually regain physical function significantly more frequently if they begin weight-bearing rehab within two weeks.
“It used to be kind of a career-killer type of injury,” says Dr. Sean Lannon, a Florida-based foot and ankle specialist who performed Howard’s surgery as team surgeon for the Buccaneers. “And it was devastating because most of these injuries are non-contact. So, guys have a hard time sort of wrapping their head around it, reconciling why this is such a bad injury for them and why it takes so long to recover.
What Mike — painfully — experienced is an established procedure commonly known as open-repair surgery. It is an invasive operation. A four-inch incision below the calf muscle is widened to expose a membrane sheath that must be spliced open to repair the ruptured Achilles with thick sutures that are tied around the tendon in supportive knots.
“That was one of the things that would give people persistent pain with the surgery,” Lannon says. “So, we’ve gone to trying to limit the incisions to a centimeter or two, up to three centimeters, doing all the work basically through a small keyhole incision, accomplishing the same surgery. That way there’s less scarring, less disruption of the biology there.”Mark LoMoglio/APHoward turns his heel to reveal the scar. It’s hardly visible.
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