The Cleveland Cavaliers NBA basketball team has very high expectations thrust upon it this year after the return of Lebron James. The city of Cleveland has not won a professional basketball, baseball or football championship since the 1960s! However, one of the Cavaliers’ key players, Anderson Varejao, just tore his achilles tendon. Varejao is 32 years old, and will probably be out for the rest of the season.
In 2013, Kobe Bryant took 8 months prior to returning to the NBA after his achilles tendon rupture. When Kobe ruptured his achilles tendon in April 2013, he was 35 years old. Shortly after his return to play in December 2013, he had a knee injury and was sidelined for the rest of the 2013-2014 season. Surprisingly, he returned to play for the 2014-2015 at the age of 36, and is thus far having a decent season if you ignore his extremely low field goal percentage.
The highest rates occurred in 2008 in men and 2007 in women, and since then the decrease has been 42% in men and 55% in women.
This is quite amazing, since the reduction in surgical treatment happened in just three (2008-2011) years for men, and in just four years (2007-2011) for women.
It should also be noted that the increases in surgeries from the 1987 through 2007/2008 mentioned in the study are probably due to increasing activity of the elderly as well as an overall increase in the older population due to higher life expectancies. This phenomenon of an increasingly older (and active) population is true in most developed countries.
I always find it amazing how a majority of people in the US who rupture their achilles tendons are treated surgically, while the reverse is true in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and probably many other countries.
Precise percentages and estimates are not readily available for most countries, so it is always great when someone releases them.
In October 2014, a great study was published by Swedish researchers that summarized the experiences of treating 27,702 patients who suffered an achilles tendon rupture in Sweden between 2001 and 2012. The key finding was that:
The proportion of surgically treated patients declined from 43% in 2001 to 28% in 2012 in men and from 34% in 2001 to 22% in 2012 in women.
Essentially, this means that as of 2012, 3 out of 4 Swedes who ruptured their achilles tendon were treated non-surgically.