Achilles tendon injury. 4. Structure of rabbit calf muscles after tendon repair with removable traction suture.

Immobilization after surgical treatment of Achilles tendon rupture with calf-muscles in a slackened position induces extensive degeneration of the tonic muscle fibres. The optimal treatment in view of maintained muscle structure should be immobilization with kept tone in the muscles. This may be possible to achieve by using a traction suture. In this investigation such a method has been applied on rabbits. It was found that in spite of the occurrence of degenerative morphologic changes the total relative fibre area was numerically larger and separation of tendon ends was significantly smaller than when the routine method had been performed. It was concluded that the investigated technique offers some advantages with regard to the muscle fibre structure.