Tuesday, November 30, 2010

High Ankle Sprain

I took a snapshot of this because you don't see this too often.  An "isolated" high ankle sprain of the distal anterior tibiofibular joint.  The deltoid, ATF, CF, and PTF ligs, and posterior tibiofibular ligs were spared.  The transverse draw tests were negative for aberrant motion, but were minimally painful.

In this scenario the traditional Mulligan style taping for a positional fault of the distal fibula will give you good results; because it also provides good stabilization to the distal anterior tibiofibular joint.  I'm expecting this athlete to make a fairly quick recovery.

6 comments:

Brian Green said...

Yes, a nice taping technique. Joe what's your thoughts on early WB'ing with these type of ankle sprains vs traditional ATFL/CF/PTFL sprains? I find early WB'ing on high ankle sprains can bite back...

Joe Przytula said...

Brian I can see you have experience with these. Agree. And I'll go a step further and say that MOST ankle sprains have SOME degree of distal tib-fib joint involvement. Which is why I disagree with those who preach driving through the dysfunction. That will only work if there is no high ankle component. The rest of this week we'll be doing allot of on ground function, self mobes in the pool with 20% body weight, and stationary bike. Allot of soft tissue work too.

Brian Green said...

Agree, sports where physical contact is part of the mechanism seems to contribute syndesmosis involvement. Yes, I would use a similar recipe in relation early movement. I find that NWB and WB mobs to create a position similar to the mulligan tape procedure can be helpful. On a possible similar note, how do you manage WBing for student athlete in high school when getting to classrooms is needed?

Joe Przytula said...

...our school has an elevator.

Brian Green said...

Nice one..but what I mean is how is the school/faculty in accommodating the student athletes when they're injured? This maybe a general question to other ATC's in the highschool settings....

Joe Przytula said...

...my standing treatment orders from my school MD permit me to issue crutches and allow students to use them in school.