Acute Ankle Sprains
Clinical Presentation
A careful history and physical examination is crucial when
evaluating a patient with an acute ankle sprain, as it can elicit
the severity of the injury. A patient usually describes “rolling
over” his or her ankle due to a combination of inversion,
plantar flexion, or internal rotation of the ankle. The patient
will likely report acute lateral ankle pain and, the physician
may elicit the extent of ligament injury by inquiring about
swelling, ability to bear weight and subsequent ecchymosis.
On physical examination, patients can localize the lateral
ankle tenderness in the acute setting but the pain and swelling
becomes more diffuse over the next few days. Careful
palpation can confirm the structures involved in the injury—
localized ATFL tenderness is exhibited at 4 to 7 days post
injury, while CFL injury can be diagnosed with tenderness
at the calcaneal insertion. Funder and coworkers18 found
that 52% of patients with ATFL tenderness indeed had a
ruptured ATFL, while 72% of patients with CFL insertional
tenderness had a ruptured CFL.
There are two provocative tests that can assess ankle
instability—the anterior drawer test and the talar tilt test.
The anterior drawer test assesses the integrity of the ATFL
as the ATFL prevents anterior translation of the talus with
respect to the tibia. The test is performed after positioning
the ankle in neutral to 10° of plantar flexion with the patient
seated and the knee flexed (Fig. 2). The examiner holds the
calcaneus in one hand while stabilizing the distal tibia in
the other, and the calcaneus is translated forward. Increased
translation of 3 mm compared to the uninjured side or an
absolute value of 10 mm of displacement correlates to ATFL
incompetence.19