Dr. Kevin Stone is a well respected orthopedic surgeon and on this site’s protocols for achilles tendon rupture rehabilitation page, I include one protocol that I found on his website.  A few days ago, Dr. Stone published an informative article on achilles tendon ruptures in the Huffington Post.  Some key items of interest:

• According to one study, women have more elastic achilles tendons compared to men.  This may be one reason behind women’s reduced rates of achilles tendon tears in comparison to men.
• Surgical repair is “almost always” recommended in the US, while non-operative healing is more common in other countries.  This has been common knowledge for a while, but I think more and more surgeons in the US are also recommending non-surgical to at least a small minority of their patients.
• Dr. Stone recommends percutaneous repair of the ruptured achilles tendon .
• The post-operative recovery program “has become more aggressive over time, with earlier range-of-motion and weight-bearing exercises than ever before.”
• I found it interesting that the healing process is nowadays “augmented by injections of growth factors and/or stem cells, both at the time of surgery and during the recovery program.”