The Achilles Tendon Rupture in Basketball: Systematic Review of the Present Literature

Background The most common cause of the Achilles tendon ruptures in the U.S. population is sports, basketball is one among them. It is not one of the most frequent injuries of this sport, but it is one of the most serious and impactful in its practice. Purpose The objective of this work is to gather evidence and evaluate the relationship between Achilles' tendon ruptures and basketball. Study Design This study designed as a systematic review. Material and Methods A search of literature in the databases PubMed, Cochrane Library, and ClinicalTrials.gov was conducted during January and February 2020. Results After the search and selection, three relevant articles were obtained due to their epidemiological content, Raikin et al and Lemme et al. In 2013 and 2018, they, respectively, conducted studies in U.S. populations, establishing sport as the most frequent injury mechanism in Achilles' tendon ruptures. It was analyzed according to injury mechanism, gender, body mass index (BMI), and age. In both studies, the lesion resulted more frequently in men and the sport involved in most of the cases was basketball (32 and 42.6%, respectively). In 2019, Lemme et al published an epidemiological design analyzing the Achilles tendon ruptures in the National Basketball Association (NBA), identifying risk factors and results in professional players. After suffering the injury, 36.8% of the patients had to retire or were holders in less than 10 games to the rest of their sports career. Conclusions The relationship between basketball and Achilles' tendon rupture is clear in the general population. Despite this, new studies are required to complement the evidence obtained so far.