by Brett D. Sachs, DPM
"Foot and ankle sprains are easily the most common thing I see. In general, they’ve been rated as 23,000 per day in the U.S. Females are by far 25% more likely to sustain an ankle sprain. I don’t really have a great answer as to why - it’s probably those pretty shoes that you guys like to wear. When you have an ankle sprain, there’s an injury to the ankle ligaments on the outside of the ankle. Ligaments attach bone together and joints together, they make the joints stable.
Most of the time it is a lateral or the outside of your ankle, the three ligaments on the outside of your ankle are the ones that are the most commonly injured. The ones on the inside are very stable so they don’t tend to be injured. They are either stretched or torn - that’s the definition of a sprain. The mechanism is that it’s a twisting motion of the ankle, so inversion is where the ankle turns in, like this one, which is the most common. Eversion is when the ankle turns out, not as common. The two types of ankle sprains: Lateral ankle sprains and then a High ankle sprain is really common, especially in football and basketball players, it will usually keep them out for about 10-12 weeks. Pretty bad injury because it’s an injury between the two major bones, your fibula bone and your tibia bone and those almost always require surgery."
