Ankle sprains

After a rolled ankle, the easiest first move costs nothing: learn what a sprain is. AAOS OrthoInfo explains that an ankle sprain occurs when the strong ligaments that support the ankle stretch beyond their limits and tear. For readers in Wood Dale, that knowledge costs nothing and needs no training.

Six questions about a sprained ankle

• How do I know if my ankle is sprained or broken? Start here. It is a read, so it costs nothing, and the Cleveland Clinic page on a sprained ankle covers symptoms, treatment and recovery time.
• What are the grades of an ankle sprain? This needs no skill beyond careful reading, and it gives you words to use with a clinician.
• What is a high ankle sprain? Another read-only question, worth a look if the usual picture does not fit.
• Does RICE still help a fresh ankle sprain? Home care of this kind is cheap, and you can stop whenever it does not help.
• Should I walk on a sprained ankle? You can change course on this one at any moment, which makes it easy to test carefully.
• When does a loose ankle need ligament surgery? This is the largest step in the group. Two papers show what the surgical side looks like: a one-year follow-up study of surgical reconstruction with the remnant ligament and functional ankle instability and a study of a modified Broström technique using three suture anchors for chronic lateral ankle instability.

Where home care stops

Cheap steps can be undone, but they have a limit. AAOS OrthoInfo warns that without proper treatment and rehabilitation, a chronic or untreated severe sprain can weaken your ankle, making it more likely that you will injure it again. That is why the questions run from free reading toward surgery.

Neighbouring groups

The imaging and casting group asks when a foot injury needs an X-ray, which sits beside the sprained-or-broken question here. The surgery recovery group covers life after an operation, which meets the ligament surgery question.