Article Text

Download PDFPDF

‘Serious thigh muscle strains’: beware the intramuscular tendon which plays an important role in difficult hamstring and quadriceps muscle strains
  1. Peter Brukner1,2,
  2. David Connell2,3
  1. 1La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
  2. 2Imaging @ Olympic Park, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
  3. 3Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
  1. Correspondence to Professor Peter Brukner, La Trobe Sport & Exercise Medicine Research Centre, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Vic 3086, Australia Australia; peterbrukner{at}gmail.com

Abstract

Why do some hamstring and quadriceps strains take much longer to repair than others? Which injuries are more prone to recurrence? Intramuscular tendon injuries have received little attention as an element in ‘muscle strain’. In thigh muscles, such as rectus femoris and biceps femoris, the attached tendon extends for a significant distance within the muscle belly. While the pathology of most muscle injures occurs at a musculotendinous junction, at first glance the athlete appears to report pain within a muscle belly. In addition to the musculotendinous injury being a site of pathology, the intramuscular tendon itself is occasionally injured. These injuries have a variety of appearances on MRIs. There is some evidence that these injuries require a prolonged rehabilitation time and may have higher recurrence rates. Therefore, it is important to recognise the tendon component of a thigh ‘muscle strain’.

  • Muscle
  • Hamstring
  • Injuries
  • Quadriceps

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

Linked Articles