Functional instability in non-contact ankle ligament injuries

Abstract

Objectives-To measure objectively functional standing balance in the acute stages of non-contact ankle sprain, and to compare patients with controls. Methods-A Chattanooga balance machine was used to measure postural stability in patients with acute ankle sprain and uninjured controls over a two week period, in one and two legged stance, with eyes open and closed. Participants also completed the Olerud and Molander questionnaire to provide a subjective measure of ankle function.Results-There was a highly significant improvement in questionnaire scores for the patients during the study period (p<0.0001). Patients appeared to be less stable than controls in all balance tests, although the diVerence did not reach significance. There was evidence of improvement over time in the number of tests successfully completed on the injured leg in single legged stance with eyes closed (p = 0.043) between visits 1 and 3. Conclusions-The patient group showed a subjective improvement, which supports clinical experience of treating acute ankle injuries. There is some evidence that on average the patient group appeared to be less stable than controls in all balance tests, although the diVerence did not reach statistical significance, even on the uninjured leg. There is a need to carry out further studies to confirm the results found in this pilot study and to investigate the hypotheses generated. It would be useful to evaluate a simple test that could be used clinically to monitor progress after ankle injury, and also to identify athletes with decreased functional stability, who may be more at risk of sustaining ankle injury. (Br J Sports Med 2000;34:352-358)

Balance assessments for predicting functional ankle instability and stable ankles

“…Secondly, a person may shift very quickly in the sagittal plane without committing a balance error, permitting COPV to detect a deficit (but not error score). In the literature, researchers have reported non-instrumented measures detecting balance deficits associated with ankle instability even though instrumented measures did not [19,22]. Others detected impairments with certain force plate measures (e.g., COPV, time-toboundary) despite some force plate measures failing to do so (e.g., center-of-pressure excursion, area) [8,10].…”

Bilateral balance impairments after lateral ankle trauma: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…outcome means, standard deviations, p values) to calculate weighted effect sizes [17,28]. On the other hand, Table 1 provides detailed characteristics of the 12 included studies [10,15,[23][24][25]33,35,38,[40][41][42][43].…”

National Athletic Trainers' Association Position Statement: Conservative Management and Prevention of Ankle Sprains in Athletes

“…138 Originally, the Olerud Scoring Scale was developed to evaluate the symptoms related to ankle fractures 89 and other acute ankle injuries. 139 Although both questionnaires have been used in research on patients with ankle injuries, 139,140 no published evidence addresses their reliability or construct validity.…”