patella tendon injury

[icyone]

Given a completely severed  patella tendon, which is worse:  a complete tear within the tendon itself, or "pull-out" fracture of a bone segment with the tendon attached?  The latter just happened to nephew, age 59, excellent physical condition,  and I am curious as to the long-term prognosis.  (I had a similar "pull-out" fracture in my shoulder years ago with excellent long-term outcome, but shoulders are a little different.)

[Michael L Gross, MD]

Both can be devastating injuries. Unfortunately, there is much more to the comparison than comparing bone to bone healing to soft tissue healing. Conventional wisdom suggests that the boney healing is more predictable, but that assumes all other things are equal, which they rarely are.

[icyone]

Thanks for the prompt answer.  

We have been discussing this among ourselves while waiting for him to get to see the OS.  Your comment about bone-to-bone healing is what I was guessing, but of course we don't know the whole story on what's happened with the connective tissues either.   We'll know more after tomorrow, but my experience is that OS tend to under-promise and over-perform, and they actually care about the follow-up.  

Thanks again...