Injection of hyaluronic acid into the knee to treat osteoarthritis is an approved treatment now. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given the use of this type of viscosupplementation in the knee a green light. The FDA has NOT approved the use of this viscosupplement for the ankle yet. Why not?

I had surgery in May of '07 to repair a subluxing peroneal tendon-the retinaculum repair. I played a season of club soccer (about 2 practices and one game per week) after being cleared the fall of '07, then high school varsity soccer with very little pain most of the time. If it was sore, the pain disappeared within an hour or two after I iced my ankle down and relaxed. This fall ('08) I played D3 college soccer and spent 3 months limping around campus. The drs haven't found anything in the MRI or X-Ray and can't really give me an answer to why I was in so much pain during our season.

I seem to have two bone spurs on my left foot. One began when I trained for a half-marathon and no longer hurts. The other one is just below my inner ankle and began after running frequent short-distances (3-4 miles). This is clearly inflamed and is painful when I run (and often times when I'm just doing normal walking).

Would walking fast be less stressful on this part of my foot? I don't want to stop running, but if this is what is causing the problem I don't have a lot of choice. How can I stay active without continuing to be in pain?

I am a 21 year old female who struggled with walking and doing everyday activities. So I went through a whole lot of specialists, and after over 6 months of (dare I say it) hell, I went to an orthopaedic surgeon. He then told me I had Tarsal Coalition, after looking at my MRI scan. Firstly I went through the non-surgical options (cast, moon-boot etc.), but nothing worked. So I opted for the surgical solution.

While it's not possible to tell what exactly is wrong with your niece's foot without examining it, it does sound like it may be a case of anterior ankle impingement. This is, simply, what you said - something, in this case soft tissues in the ankle, have been caught in the ankle joint and cause pain whenever she moves her toes upwards, reducing the angle of the ankle.

The ankle is a complicated joint - it's small, like the wrist, but complicated because of its structure. While certain types of surgeries are easier to do on the larger joints, surgeons have to find ways to access the inside of the ankle without causing more damage.

An arthroscopy is a procedure that allows a doctor to see inside a joint without major surgery. Using a small incision, the surgeon inserts a long, thin instrument with a camera on the end. Arthroscopies were often used for larger joints, like knees, but the ankle was often considered to be too small and complicated a joint for this procedure. This idea was changed in 1972 when researcher Watanabe and colleagues published the results of 28 ankle arthroscopies.

Every day in the United States, 23,000 people sprain their ankles. More than two-thirds of those folks will end up with CAI. There are several theories to help explain the mechanism behind chronic sprains.

Mechanical factors, such as the change in tissue tension around the ankle when a ligament is sprained, have always been part of the picture. But this is only one factor. Another is the loss of normal sensorimotor responses.

We can't answer this directly since we don't know from your question just what kind of program you have been following. But we can tell you the proposed factors in recurrent ankle sprain and the principles physical therapists follow when treating a patient with chronic ankle stability (CAI).

I am 28, Male.I tore my Ligaments badly on my Left ankle playing football about 3 years ago I and had physio on it, put i never got my ankle back to 100% i always had tightness on it after Physio that made me have difficulty running long distance i would hav to stop runnning thinking my Ankle would snap? Last Nov 07 i hurt my Left knee lifting Leg extension weights and still to this day i am having trouble with my Knee after Physio, seeing Specialists, Mri-scans, Xrays, Steroid injections and Keyhole surgery done on it and plenty of Medication drugs for Pain relief.