Surgical repair techniques, functional outcome, and return to sports after apophyseal avulsion fractures of the ischial tuberosity in adolescents

Purpose Among juvenile apophyseal avulsion injuries of the pelvis in adolescents, fractures of the ischial tuberosity are rare but sustainably debilitating. Also because informations on surgical repair options are very sparse and so far limited to general reviews, reports of individual cases or heterogeous small case series, practitioners, patients and their parental environment still feel a comprehensible hesitation regarding operative treatment. Therefore we intended to investigate patient related outcome measurements and return to sports rates after different types of surgical intervention in an own case series, so far unprecendented in its size. Methods Patient data of adolescents that underwent surgical intervention for a displaced apophyseal avulsion fracture of the ischial tuberosity between 01/2015 and 12/2019 in our institution were gathered. Patients were then evaluated using the hamstring injury specific Perth Hamstring Assessment Tool (PHAT). Furthermore the return to sports level in comparison to the particular pre-injury level was rated. Results Eleven adolescents with an acute or chronic mean fragment dislocation of 3.3 cm (SD +/- 1.7) underwent surgical intervention in the assigned period. The mean post-operative PHAT score was 86.9 (0-100, SD +/- 11.9) and thus good to excellent. The majority of adolescents (10/11) was able to return to their pre-injury sports, whereas 63.6% achieved full or nearly full level. Conclusions Surgical refixation or restoration of aphoyseal avulsion fractures of the ischial tuberosity result in good to excellent outcomes and return to sport rates, irrespective of the type of intervention. Here prompt diagnosis with a timely intervention seems more promising than delayed interventions in chronic cases. Beyond 1.5 cm of fragment displacement affected patients should be counselled for surgical intervention.