Hamstring Tears

The dreaded feeling of running hard and feeling a pop in the back of the leg is an all too common situation for many high level sprinting athletes and even from everyday injuries.  Often times this may be a hamstring strain, but can be a complete rupture of the hamstring tendons from the bone.  When a complete rupture occurs, this often times requires surgery to reattach the tendon back to the bone to allow for return to running and even non-painful walking.

But, of the biggest questions becomes how will I do after I have my hamstring repaired?  A recent publication out of Kerlan Jobe Orthopedic Clinic in Los Angeles, CA by Eric Bowman, Nathan Marshall and others lends insight into this issue.  In the most recent publication in The Online Journal of Sports Medicine (OJSM), this article evaluates Predictors of Clinical Outcomes after Proximal Hamstring Repair.

Drs. Bowman and Marshall looked at a cohort of patients that underwent hamstring repairs and evaluated their outcomes.  They found that overall 88% of patients returned to sport at an average of 7.6 months.  94% of patients were satisfied or highly satisfied with surgery and 78% had good activity scores.  Runners returned to running on average at 6 months, but only returned to the same level of running 50% of the time.

This study showed that overall patients that had a repaired hamstring have a high level of satisfaction after surgery and return to sport at a high level.  Runners, however, were typically less satisfied than other groups and returned to running at a lower level.

For a full copy of this recent publication, this can be viewed at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2325967118823712