Tendon Repair in India

A tendon (or sinew) is a tough band of fibrous connective tissue that usually connects muscle to bone and is capable of withstanding tension. Tendons are similar to ligaments and fasciae; all three are made of collagen. Ligaments join one bone to another bone; fasciae connect muscles to other muscles. Tendons and muscles work together to move bones.

Histologically, tendons consist of dense regular connective tissue fascicles encased in dense irregular connective tissue sheaths. Normal healthy tendons are composed mostly of parallel arrays of collagen fibers closely packed together. The dry mass of normal tendons, which makes up about 30% of their total mass, is composed of about 86% collagen, 2% elastin, 1–5% proteoglycans, and 0.2% inorganic components such as copper, manganese, and calcium.The collagen portion is made up of 97–98% type I collagen, with small amounts of other types of collagen.

Tendons have been traditionally considered to simply be a mechanism by which muscles connect to bone, functioning simply to transmit forces. This connection allows tendons to passively modulate forces during locomotion, providing additional stability with no active work. However, over the past two decades, much research focused on the elastic properties of some tendons and their ability to function as springs. Not all tendons are required to perform the same functional role, with some predominantly positioning limbs, such as the fingers when writing (positional tendons) and others acting as springs to make locomotion more efficient (energy storing tendons).

Tendons are viscoelastic structures which means they exhibit both elastic and viscous behaviour. When stretched, tendons exhibit typical "soft tissue" behavior. The force-extension, or stress-strain curve starts with a very low stiffness region, as the crimp structure straightens and the collagen fibres align suggesting negative Poisson's ratio in the fibres of the tendon.