ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Changes in joint position sense after surgically treated chronic lateral ankle instability
Department of Sports Surgery, National Institute for Sports Medicine, Budapest, Hungary
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr Halasi
Department of Sports Surgery, National Institute for Sports Medicine, Budapest 1123, Hungary; kynsburg{at}medscape.com
Background: A search of the literature shows that the effect of surgery on ankle proprioception has been hardly investigated.
Objective: To examine the effect of anatomical reconstruction of the anterolateral capsuloligamentous complex on ankle joint position sense.
Methods: A prospective study using the "slope box" test. Ten consecutive patients were included in the study, and 10 healthy athletes represented the control group.
Results: Similar test-retest reliability rates (overall reliability 0.92; p = 0.0013) were obtained to those of the original designers of the method. There were no significant differences with respect to side dominance (p = 0.9216). Investigation of the characteristics of mean absolute estimate errors showed that the controls tested became error prone in the range of slope altitudes 7.5–25° in every direction, compared with the range 0–5° (range of p values 0.00003–0.00072). The results of the intervention group showed that, for the two main directions of interest (anterior and lateral), preoperative differences in mean absolute estimate errors between injured (anterior 3.91 (2.81)°; lateral 4.06 (2.85)°) and healthy (anterior 2.94 (2.21)°, lateral 3.19 (2.64)°) sides (anterior, p = 0.0124; lateral, p = 0.0250) had disappeared (postoperative differences: anterior, p = 0.6906; lateral, p = 0.4491). The afflicted ankle had improved significantly after surgery in both important directions (anterior, p<0.0001; lateral, p = 0.0023).
Conclusions: The study shows that differences in joint position sense between healthy and injured ankles disappeared as the result of surgery. Preoperative data show that proprioceptive malfunction is a cause of functional instability. If treatment is by means of surgery, the retensioning of the original anterolateral structures is inevitable, even if other grafting or surgical techniques are used.
Keywords: proprioception; ankle instability; lateral ligaments; anatomical reconstruction; joint position sense
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
-
Panics, G, Tallay, A, Pavlik, A, Berkes, I
(2008). Effect of proprioception training on knee joint position sense in female team handball players. Br. J. Sports. Med.
42: 472-476
[Abstract] [Full Text]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
- Citation Map
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
