Ankle Injury Essay

Intro to Athletic Training

Ankle injuries are very common among athletes in every sport. Many people believe that different ways help you heal from an ankle injury. This article, A Systematic Review on the Treatment of Acute Ankle Sprain: Braces versus Other Functional Treatment Types, explains its results in testing these methods.
Their methods were to take a large number of people with an acute ankle sprain and see if there was a difference between a brace and other functional methods. This study showed that between the methods of treatment there was “no evidence” classified for a reoccurrence for an ankle sprain or injury. Also measured in this study were residual complaints associated with ankle injuries. Those three areas were pain, swelling, and stability. In all three areas, each of the five studies proved a “no evidence” for the effect of an
ankle brace or the elastic bandage used during the study. There were some functional outcomes in this study. It showed that there was a better effect of an ankle brace compared to Tubigrip, which is a type of tubular bandaged, when it came to treating ankle injuries.
The last area of study presented in this study was the time of resumption of sports, work and daily activity.
Three high-quality studies were used for the sports section. Out of the three groups that tested the ankle braces versus Tubigrip, only one had found significant percent of people that used an ankle brace returned to playing sports a lot sooner than the ones that used the Tubigrip. Even though one group found results for that test, the other two did not find any significant evidence to prove that an ankle brace was better than Tubigrip. This lead to the conclusion of "no evidence" in this study. As for the results of returning to work, six studies or groups were used to determine which is better. Only two out of the six groups found that an ankle brace returned the injured to work on average of four days sooner than elastic bandage. Since only two out of six came up with significant results, it is less than fifty percent which resulted in a "no evidence" classification. The test of returning to daily activities resulted in a "no evidence" classification also even though only one group did the
study.
In conclusion, finding treatment for a sprained ankle is rare, but according to this study ankle braces have shown to be a better functional outcome in helping you through the recovery process. This study provided a few main points for treating an acute ankle sprain. One, in terms of functional outcomes, ankle braces proved to be an effective way in treating an ankle sprain. Two, in comparison to other treatment methods ankle braces are not less effective. Three, research is needed to provide the public with very effective ways to treat acute ankle sprains or any ankle injury.