Traumatic Skeletal Muscle Injury and Recovery.

Skeletal muscle is integral to life and functions to produce movement and locomotion, postural control, respiratory activity, and heat production. Yet, injuries to skeletal muscles occur across the lifespan, and depending on the injury mechanism, nuances in physiology and severity, how and if recovery of muscle function is possible is varied. This chapter presents the current physiologic understanding of various traumatic skeletal muscle injuries with attention to landmark work that has built the foundation for our current understanding. Injuries ranging from those that leave the extracellular matrix (ECM) intact or completely lost will be discussed as well as the common eccentric contraction-induced and ischemia-reperfusion injuries.