Pacifica Orthopedics, Huntington Beach, California.

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Do You Have A Pulled Tendon?

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If you have been advised recently or you know of someone that has been told lately that they have a pulled tendon then you may have stopped to think about what that actually means. Have you ever wondered what the difference between a tendon and a ligament is? What about the difference between tendons, muscles and ligaments? Let us take a closer look at what these mean and then discover what actually happens when we have a pulled tendon.

As we all should know we all have a skeleton that is made up of bones. All of these bones are able to move about due to the muscles that surround them as they are able to expend and contract. These bones are wrapped together by elastic type bands that we call ligaments. A less stretchy or elastic type band that joins the muscles to the bones is the tendons. To put it simplistically, tendons are really just extensions of the muscles themselves. They give the muscles support in order to extend as far as they can for movement such as the action of stretching the arm straight out. The tendons allow the muscles in the forearm to control the hand and the fingers.

When we hear the orthopedic doctor talk about these body parts and the traumas that they may incur they tend to describe it like this: muscles are pulled, ligaments are sprained and tendons are strained. Therefore if you have been told that you have a pulled tendon then you can surmise that you have strained it.

When we pull a tendon there will no doubt be a sharp and excessive pain to the area at the moment of it occurring. This is because the fibers of the tendon have been torn. You can expect there to be some swelling around the local area of the trauma and this is the body’s way of trying to heal itself. The swelling unfortunately does not aid in the recovery of a pulled tendon as it makes the job of it being able to work properly more cumbersome and difficult.

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