What is tendinopathy?

Thank you, Mr. Mischuk. So we've discussed about Achilles tendon rupture. Can you please tell us about a chronic condition associated with Achilles tendon such as tendinopathy? So tendinopathy occurs on the Achilles tendon in two main places We can see on the monitor here there's an area of inflammation in the non-insertional part of the Achilles tendon about five to six centimeters above its insertion from the bone or we can get inflammation at the point of where the tendon inserts and tendinopathy or tendinitis basically the same thing is basically inflammation of the tendon actually in the substance or on its attachment to the bone and both can occur usually at separate times and they're usually related to the fact that the patient has a tight gastrocnemius muscle which is this muscle here because that's the muscle that drives the function of the Achilles if that is tight then the Achilles will be tight and it would therefore be prone to having inflammation and this can then result to little spurs of bone so here you can see a patient has got a bit of a bump on the back of the heel due to the fact that the Achilles has been tight and has been pulling on the back of the heel resulting in a little bump. Here you can see an MRI picture and you can see that the Achilles is nice and thin at the top, nice and thin at the bottom but in the middle it's all inflamed and thickened and that would be a sort of non-insertional Achilles tendinopathy similar to this area here whereas this one would be more akin to an insertional tendinopathy which is this one here so that's what an Achilles tendinopathy is it's basically an inflammation of the tendon and it can occur in two different areas of the tendon i.e. in the middle of the tendon or at its insertion into the bone more distally and the symptoms that the patient comes with to you is symptoms of pain, discomfort, swelling, bit of redness, bit of heat in the area as well.