Does Resilience Correlate With Mental Health Following Flexor Hallucis Longus Tendon Transfer for Achilles Pathologies?

BACKGROUND: Resilience is a person's ability to recover from a perceived stressor. Our paper aims to describe trends in resilience and to describe the relationship between resilience and mental health following flexor hallucis longus (FHL) tendon transfer for Achilles pathologies. METHODS: Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) and Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System Mental Health (PROMIS MH) scores were obtained prospectively and analyzed retrospectively. The Foot and Ankle Ability Measure (FAAM) was also assessed to provide a reference for postoperative changes in foot-related physical function during activities of daily living (ADL) and sports. Descriptive statistics were used to assess demographics as well as changes in resilience and PROMIS MH.  Results: Preoperative scores for BRS and PROMIS MH were 3.65 (0.8046) and 49.22 (9.37). Resilience showed an increase at the two-week follow-up to 3.66 (p=0.6692). PROMIS MH significantly increased at the two-week interval from 49.22 to 50.11 (p=0.0001). Resilience was found to be significantly associated with PROMIS MH (p < 0.05). Despite gradual improvements in FAAM-ADL and FAAM-Sports, postoperative PROMIS MH scores did not indicate a significant improvement in mental health beyond baseline up to one year postoperatively.  Conclusions: Resilience shows no changes in value between the preoperative and postoperative state for FHL transfer and displays a significant correlation with PROMIS MH.