Re-Op Surgery Photos - Open lower leg, spreaders, tendon grafts, lots of sutures

October 27, 2011

I saw my surgeon today for a check-up (everything is going well so far) and I got a copy of some photos she took during my surgery 6 weeks ago.  I thought some of you might like to see what a heavy-duty re-op surgery looks like.  As a reminder, this was an operation to fix an earlier failed surgery where my tendon did not grow back together properly.  As you can see, it was necessary to open up the entire tendon.  The first photo is taken after she had cleaned the tendon having excising the scar tissue, and it shows just the viable parts of the tendon.  You can see that there is a big chunk missing at the top of the photo near my heal, where the tendon had not healed properly.

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Here’s a photo showing the points where she harvested graft strips from where the tendon meets the gastrocnemius muscle.  She then used these grafts to reinforce the lower part of the tendon.

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And finally here’s the finished product showing everything sewn back together.

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Posted by ahnadlass Filed in Uncategorized

6 Responses to “Re-Op Surgery Photos - Open lower leg, spreaders, tendon grafts, lots of sutures”

  1. ryanb Says:
    October 27th, 2011 at 12:55 pm

    Just in time for Halloween!!

    Wow.

  2. ali Says:
    October 27th, 2011 at 1:29 pm

    Oh my goodness, so glad you are finally on the road to recovery. Do you know how much graft was taken out and replaced? Thanks for posting.

  3. ahnadlass Says:
    October 27th, 2011 at 2:06 pm

    The surgeon took out three strips in the gastrocnemius muscle. On the middle photo, the grafts appear as the three thin long holes in the white sheath showing the muscle below. In the first photo, the grafts have not been taken out, but the surgeon has already marked the spots with a marker (looks like purple dots) where she is going to remove them. These three strips were then wrapped and sutured around the lower end of the tendon.

    It’s amazing what can be done to a tendon / lower leg.

  4. runnerwannabe Says:
    October 27th, 2011 at 10:00 pm

    WOW!! That is incredible! Looks like you had to be very sore for awhile! Hope it heals this time and good luck!!

  5. king Says:
    October 27th, 2011 at 10:29 pm

    Wow, extremely interesting. Thanks for showing those pictures. I hope all is well with your recovery!

  6. univofpittbull Says:
    October 28th, 2011 at 9:47 am

    Holy Cow! Those are some amazing pics.