Comparison of Treatment Methods of Acute Achilles Tendon Rupture.

Aim: To find out and compare possible methods of treatment of acute Achilles tendon rupture and their effectiveness using scientific publications. Tasks: 1.To review conservative methods of treatment of acute Achilles tendon rupture using scientific literature and to evaluate their effectiveness. 2.To evaluate traditional surgical methods for the treatment of acute Achilles tendon rupture and their effectiveness on the basis of scientific publications. 3.Using the scientific literature to compare the effectiveness of conservative and surgical treatment of acute Achilles tendon rupture. Methods: The search for scientific publications was executed on the PubMed databases, using selected keywords and their combinations. Articles were selected based on the stated criteria for inclusion (articles written 2010-2020m., non-duplicate articles written in English, articles based on research or clinical cases) and exclusion (articles older than 2010m., duplicate articles or not written in English, review articles). The information presented in the publications was analysed and summarized Results: After carrying out the search in electronic database, 654 publications were discovered and only the ones that meet all the requirements were selected. There were 7 of those. Overall number of subjects in the selected publications – 952. The take of subjects in individual publications vary from 37 to 538. An analysis of articles using conservative treatment for acute Achilles tendon rupture found that the mean ATRS score in patients treated with a functionalbrace was significantly higher in the initial stages of treatment than with cast immobilization. However, no statistically significant difference was observed at the end of treatment. No significant difference in ATRS score was observed between patients treated with surgical therapies at all stages of treatment. Comparing conservative and surgical treatments, it was observed that patients treated surgically in the early stages of treatment performed better on functional test results than treated conservatively, but the difference became insignificant at the end of treatment. Recurrent tendon rupture was observed in 2 of 169 surgically treated and 53 of 783 conservatively treated patients, the difference between groups being statistically significant (p