The Role of Ankle Arthroscopy in Patients with Chronic Ankle Pain

만성 족관절통 환자에서의 족관절 관절경 소견

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the significance of arthroscopic examination in patients with chronic ankle pain. Eighty eight arthroscopic procedures were conducted due to symptoms of chronic ankle pain. The pathology of the 88 ankles could be categorized into four groups ; 22 anterior impingement syndrome, 20 anterolateal impingement syndrome, 22 instability and 20 osteochondral lesion, 59 of patients(67.0%) had trauma history and 14(15.9%) of patients had injured chronic repetitive microtrauma. During the arthroscopic procedure, we found unexpected chondral lesions of high incidence(39.1%). These lesions were not detected both by the physical examination and radiologic examinantion. These pathologies were treated during the course of arthroscopic procedure. We concluded that ankle arthroscopy may be a very useful and therapeutic tool in the patients who have not reponded to the conservative treatment. And due to high incidence of intra-articular pathology in patients with chronic ankle pain, arthroscopic examination should be performed prior to final decision.