Long-Term Functional Outcome After Primary Repair of the Lateral Ligaments of the Ankle

Abstract

We retrospectively reexamined a total of 100 patients 6 to 8 years after primary repair of ruptured lateral liga ments of the ankle. Fifty-nine percent of the injuries had occurred in sports; the other main causes of the injuries were accidents at work (12%), in traffic (10%), and at home (4%). Almost two-thirds of the sports injuries were sustained in volleyball. The most com mon type of injury was a combined rupture of the anterior talofibular and the calcaneofibular ligaments (66 patients). According to subjective assessment, 74 patients had excellent or good results. For the anterior drawer sign test, 75 patients showed no sign of insta bility in their injured ankles. The scores in our perfor mance test protocol of ankle injuries were classified as excellent or good in 65 patients, fair in 27 patients, and poor in 8 patients. The overall long-term results were acceptable in the majority of the patients. Prospective, randomized studies are needed to clarify if nonopera tive treatment (i.e., early controlled mobilization) would give similar long-term results.