Eureka! Institutional Repository

Over the last decade there has been made great progress in understanding tendinopathy. Despite the recent research progress about tendinopathy, rehabilitation remains in early stages. However, the way in which tendinopathies were treated has changed in contrast to some years back as new dada come to fore. The aim of this review is to present the latest dada in assessment and rehabilitation of patellar and Achilles tendinopathy. Search has been made in research machines such as PubMed, PEDro, Research Gate, Google Scholar and in international magazines such as BJM and others. This paper is a review of literature, and it presents the anatomical, histological and biomechanical characteristics of the tendon, the various tendon injuries, the patellar and Achilles tendinopathies, and the analysis of three different rehabilitation approaches. Extensive analysis is carried out for the physiotherapeutic assessment of these tendinopathies, and for their physiotherapeutic rehabilitation. Therapeutic exercise protocols for rehabilitation are presented as well as a concise exercise program. Finally, the conclusions of this review are presented. The main conclusions of the literature review have shown that tendon should be loaded, but with an initial load modification, rehabilitation need time and gradually progression, and the first line in treatment should be therapeutic exercises, which should be individualized for each patient. So, it is clear that although there is significant research progress, the need of large, reliable, clinical trials is necessary to prove the effectiveness of various physiotherapeutic treatments.