- Your ankle functions as a hinge joint.
The unique design makes it a very stable joint.
Ankle stability is crucial
because your ankle has to support
1 1/2 times your body weight when you walk
and up to eight times your body weight when you run.
Normal ankle function is essential
in walking, running, and jumping.
Your ankle stability is supported
by the muscles, tendons, and ligaments
surrounding your joint.
Ankle sprains are common injuries
that happen to patients young and old.
Sprains are injuries to ligaments
that cause overstretching or tearing.
These ligaments are responsible for connecting the bones.
Sprains of these ligaments
usually occur when your ankle
is twisted or turned in.
Depending on your injury,
the ligaments can be either partially or completely torn.
Today we're going to take a closer look
at how your ankle anatomy contributes
to your risk of ankle sprains,
how ankle sprains occur and what they feel like,
how we evaluate ankle sprains,
and what your treatment options are.
Finally, what can you do to minimize the risk
of spraining your ankle.
Let's take a look at the parts list.
First of all, we have a bone that's called
the tibia.
This is the tibia.
Alongside it on the outside
we have a bone called
the fibula.
And sitting in the middle of both of these bones
is a bone called the talus.
So we have the talus,
the tibia,
and alongside the tibia
we have the fibula.
And then for simplicity sake,
hooked on to the talus
is the rest of the foot and ankle.
So here are toes,
one, two, three, four, five,
starting with your big toe,
and then the other fours.
Now, connecting
these bones of the ankle,
that is the talus,
and this end of the fibula,
which is called the lateral malleolus,
and this end of the tibia,
which is called the medial malleolus,
are these ankle ligaments.
First of all we have very important one
on the outside here that connects
the talus to the lateral malleolus,
the first rope or ligament.
This second rope or ligament that connects
the end of the fibula
to the end of the tibia,
this is an area that we call the syndesmosis.
And finally, a ligament that connects
this end of the tibia, the medial malleolus,
to the talus.
So three ligaments.
The most common injury that we see
to these ligaments
is when the foot and ankle roll inward
in this direction, like this.
As a result you can see,
if this foot and ankle rolls inward,
the rope or ligament that's going to be affected
first and foremost is this one on the outside.
This collateral ligament of the ankle,
the one on the outside, right,
can tear part of the way or all the way.
And again, depending on how hard we roll it in,
we can also tear this ligament
and finally this one on the inside.
We can also look at this ankle
from the side view.
If we look at it from the side view,
it looks something like this.
Here is the tibia.
Here is the talus.
Here is the heel bone that the talus sits on.
Here is what we call the navicular.
And then the toe bones
connected to the rest of it.
In the back, by the way,
we have the calf muscle
with the important Achilles tendon
that attaches to the heel bone.
Now, superimposed,
because this is the outside,
superimposed on the tibia
we're going to see the fibula.
So we have the fibula
like this.
Here's the fibula.
And then the fibula is connected
to this talus bone by these outside ligaments.
And these ligaments
actually come in three parts.
There's one part in the front
that attaches from the fibula to the talus.
There's a second part that attaches
from the fibula to the calcaneus.
And there's a third part that attaches
from the back of the fibula
to the back of the talus.