Lateral ankle ligament sprains are one of the most common injuries in athletics.
Ankle injuries account for 10-30% of all injuries in sport, and lateral ankle ligament
injuries consist of 77% of all ankle injuries.1 Lateral ankle sprains account for 85% of the
ankle sprains that occur during soccer.2 First time lateral ankle injuries are influenced by
gender, level of competition, and type of sport.3 Beynnon et al.
3
found that first-time
ankle ligament injuries occur in 4.8% of the athletes overall. The overall injury rate was
0.85/1000 person-days of exposure to sport. The authors also found that there was no
statistically significant between first-time injury rates in high school and college.
Furthermore, the re-injury rate is much higher, and can be found to approach an 80%
recurrence