An inverted ankle joint orientation at foot strike could incite ankle inversion sprain: Comparison between injury and non-injured cutting motions of a tennis player

Ankle sprain is very common in sports. Research on its prevention is as important as on its treatment as recommended in the 2016 consensus statement of the International Ankle Consortium. Successful prevention depends on the understanding of its mechanism, which has been presented with quantities in some recent case reports. Inciting event was suggested to be an inverted ankle joint at foot strike, however, is still lacking evidence from comparison with non-injury trials. This study investigated the ankle joint orientation at foot strike in successful non-injury cases and compared them with a previously analysed ankle sprain injury case. Two injury-free cutting motions with similar movement approach to a previously analysed ankle sprain injury performed by the same athlete were collected from an online search and were trimmed from 0.05 second before until 0.30 second after the foot strike. The video sequences were then processed by video editing software and then analysed by a model-based image-matching motion analysis technique. Ankle joint orientation at foot strike and the profiles were presented in inversion, plantarflexion and rotation planes, for both the previously analysed injury case and the two non-injury cases. The ankle joint orientation at foot strike was 0-1 degree inverted and 10-21 degree dorsiflexed in the two non-injury cases, compared to 14-degree inverted and 16-degree plantarflexed in the previously analysed injury case. From the case comparison, it can be observed that an inverted ankle joint orientation at foot strike in an inciting event of ankle inversion sprain.