This week's article is a narrative review titled "Biology and physiology of tendon healing." This article should be titled "Microbiology and physiology of tendon healing" because it goes very in-depth on the molecular and cellular components of tendons and their roles in tendon health; including tenocytes, extracellular matrix proteins, hormonal factors, and immune cells. For the most part, this goes into greater detail that physical therapists have to know, especially when describing tendon pathology to patients. However, an understanding of the phases of healing (inflammatory, proliferative, and remodeling) is crucial for physical therapists when assessing injury timelines. Unfortunately, this article does not discuss the differences in this healing process between acute and chronic overuse injuries, like tendinopathies. It is possible there is disruption in this process in tendinopathic tendons. They do say how "poor intrinsic healing ability of the tendon" and inadequate recovery can lead to accumulation of damage over time, but do not specify what constitutes poor intrinsic healing ability. There is discussion of angiogensis after injury, with a bilateral difference in number of vessels ni an injured tendon even 20 weeks after an initial injury. This could relate to chronic tendon pain, however this is not discussed. Overall, it is hard to take actionable information to the clinic from this article since it was so focused on microbiological factors.

The abstract can be found here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38307405/

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