ANKLE INJURIES AND REHABILITATION

Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation specialist Gary Curtis Walker, M.D., tells us crucial exercises for coming back from an ankle injury.

If you have an ankle injury is it true that your ankles will be weaker in the future?

Dr. Walker: I think certainly anytime you injure any part of the body that part of the body has the potential to be more predisposed to injury.

Do people who sprain their ankles, who do not get adequate treatment after just spraining it over and over, will they end up needing surgery?

Dr. Walker: The ankle is truly unstable. Yet, I think there is a way to prevent the ankle in almost all cases from getting to a point of needing surgery. If the patient just recurrently continues to sprain the ankle they may end up coming to surgery altho ugh most of those I think can be avoided with appropriate exercise and rehabilitation.

What are some of those exercises?

Dr. Walker: Maintaining range of motion is critical and a lot of times trainers, therapists, doctors will instruct an athlete to do various range of motion exercises with their ankle and foot such as spelling the alphabet with their toes or their foot sit ting there just with your foot out in space. And print the alphabet and then write the alphabet in cursive which actually takes a little bit more motion of the ankle.

A simple exercise for strengthening the ankle is placing your foot on the floor against for instance the leg of a chair or couch and pushing your foot out sideways both inside and outward to strengthen up the muscles that turn in and out. Pulling the foot up and then pushing the foot down to strengthen those muscles.

Keeping your heel planted and then moving the front of your foot out sideways. And then with your heel on the ground pushing it up in the air against it or down.

How can you tell if you seriously injure your ankle or your knee?

Dr. Walker: The kind of a guide that I give parents of athletes at recreation high school and collegiate type, the guide I give them is if you have an ankle or a knee that's injured and you cannot bear any weight on it what so ever at the time of the inju ry then you are probably dealing with a pretty significant injury. Another area is particularly with the knee, is if you injury your knee and you feel or sense a pop and there is immediate swelling, again that would be an indicator of probably a fairly si gnificant injury inside of the knee.