Preliminary investigation on the medial ankle ligament injury and its pathomechanism / 中华创伤杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To discuss the pathomechanism of medial ankle instability after medial ligament injury. Methods The study involved 15 patients including eight males and seven females, at average age of 40 years (range 22-58 years). There were two patients with acute ankle sprain, three with chronic ankle injury, three with congenital pes planus, five with posterior tibial tendon dysfunction, one with pronation external rotation ankle fracture and one with old avulsion medial malleolus. All patients were treated surgically with deltoid ligament repair, when eight patients further received calcaneal lengthing osteotomy, five received medial cuneiform close wedge osteotomy and one received medial shift calcaneal osteotomy. All patients were followed up for 7-56 months. American Orthopedic Foot and Ankle Society (AOFAS) ankle-hindfoot scale was used for pre- and post-operative evaluation of the function. All data were analyzed using t test. Results The clinical data of one patient was excluded from the statistical analysis because AOFAS ankle-hindfoot scale could not be applied for evaluating the acute ankle fracture. The AOFAS ankle-hindfoot scale was 42.4 + 10.6 before surgery and 89.8 +6.2 at the final followup for 14 patients (P＜0.05). Conclusions Deltoid ligament is an important anatomical structure.More attention should be paid to its repair under following aonditions ( 1 ) the injury of the deltoid ligament involves tibiospring and tibionavicular ligament; (2) patients have congenital pes planus and posterior tibial tendon dysfunction; (3) patients present with ankle fractures and have history of repeated ankle sprain.