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.4
Relating specifically to women’s collegiate soccer, the National Collegiate
Athletic Association (NCAA)’s injury surveillance system for collegiate women’s soccer
found that females are four (4) times more likely to get an ankle sprain during a game
than in practice. Ankle sprains account for 18.3% of injuries during games, which make
ankle sprains the most common injury during games, and 15.3% of injuries during
practices, which make ankle sprains the second most common injury during practice.5
Injuries to the lower extremity, in general, account for 67.8% of injuries during games
and 72% during practices. Beynnon et al.6
found that females who played soccer had a
higher prevalence of ankle injuries compared to those who played field hockey or
lacrosse.