Standardised virtual fracture clinic management of Achilles tendon ruptures is safe and reproducible

Abstract

Background: Traditional fracture clinics are some of the busiest clinics in a hospital, often with significant patient waiting times and delays. The use of virtual fracture clinic (VFC) for the management of certain injuries to reduce the workload on the traditional fracture clinic, in addition to reducing costs is growing in popularity. The tendoachilles is the most frequently ruptured tendon in the body but despite this, management remains a keenly debated topic.

Methods: All adult patients referred to the VFC with an actual or suspected Achilles tendon rupture were identified between January 2015 to October 2017.

Results: This study found that patient with and acute achilles tendon ruptures managed according to a standardised VFC protocol had a re-rupture rate of 3.82%.

Conclusions: One of the advantages of a VFC model that is standardised, initiated in the ED, is that it has no variation in outcome seen in our patient group.

Keywords: TA; Tendoachilles; Virtual Fracture Clinic.