High Ankle Sprains, the Syndesmotic Tightrope, and Modern Achilles Repair with Dr. Norman Waldrop

And my question to you, first of all, is are we really seeing more of these as in more frequently, or is it just that we're recognizing them better than we used to?

Asking tough questions right out of the gate, I think.

So I think that's a difficult question.

I'll start with this.

I think in the world of foot and ankle, we have long been a little bit behind relative to sports and in some of the other parts of orthopedics is a relatively young subspecialty.

And I think we have had an influx of... technology and implants and things like that over the last several years that have changed how we see things.

The high ankle sprain is one of those things.

It's an injury that I think for the longest time it probably saw us and we maybe weren't the best at understanding it and how it works.

And we've really put a focus on that over the last couple, maybe really over the last decade.

You are right.

So recently the NFL gave us some data that now shows that the high ankle sprain is actually the largest time loss injury in the NFL.

So it is now the single injury that keeps athletes out of action the most.

And I think that there's probably a trickle down effect.

It's probably the same at college, high school, no matter really what level.

And so we need to get better at it.

And I would say, I think I know where you might be going next, but our treatment of it has become more aggressive.

And I think that's actually been a positive thing.

I think there are probably a lot of older athletes who had them that maybe have some struggles now that maybe if they had the same injury today, it might be a little different.

Before we get into the treatment of it, could you just define a high ankle sprain? Because I think that term gets thrown around so much, but people may not really know the breakdown of not only what constitutes a high ankle sprain, but going from a more mild version to the most severe version.