Common Ankle Surgeries

Every day your ankles work hard to support your weight and make it possible for you to utilize your feet. Standing, running, walking, jumping, or sitting up in a chair depend on your ankles to reinforce your legs and your body. Our ankles are powerful, but overuse and trauma can push them to their breaking points. If you experience an injury to your ankle that conservative remedies cannot manage, it's time to speak to an orthopedic surgeon in Orange City about ankle surgery to restore your ankle's function.

The best kind of surgery to treat an ankle condition depends on the damage and certain health factors. Your physician will clarify which kind of surgery might be best for you, and it may be one of the following kinds:

Ankle Arthroscopy

Surgeons can treat loose bone shards, damaged cartilage, or torn ligaments (like in a severely sprained ankle) with arthroscopy. In this minimally intrusive procedure, your surgeon makes a slight incision to insert a slim tube with a fiber-optic video operation called an arthroscope.

The sight inside your joint is transmitted to a video monitor in your operating room. This permits your surgeon to examine the joint and guides their subsequent actions without making a massive incision.

Further incisions might be made at different points near your affected ankle. Your surgeon will utilize special surgical tools to treat and correct the joint.

Given the few precise incisions in arthroscopic surgery, a patient encounters less postoperative discomfort and recovers faster than after traditional open surgery. As a result, most arthroscopic surgery is completed on an outpatient basis.

Ankle Fracture Restoration Surgery

If you break any ankle joint bones, your surgeon can relieve the pain and fix the bones via surgery. This often involves repositioning the broken bone fragments and utilizing metal plates and screws to keep the bone fragments together to promote proper healing.

Ankle Replacement

In ankle replacement surgery, your surgeon extracts the damaged ends of the ankle bones and sticks a prosthetic ankle into place. Contenders for ankle replacement are healthy people who experience advanced arthritis. Although the technique can reduce your pain, surgeons may advise you to bypass high-impact exercises to prevent harming the artificial joint.

Ankle Fusion

With an ankle fusion, your surgeon vacates damaged tissue and permanently binds the ankle bones together, employing metal screws and plates. The impaired bones will then innately fuse into one bone as they recover. In contrast with ankle replacement surgery, this is recommended for more youthful patients with more dynamic lifestyles.

One disadvantage of the procedure, which a surgeon will examine with you, is that it decreases the ankle's range of motion, which may also result in added stress on your nearby joints, which raises your risk of developing arthritis in the joints.

Lateral Ankle Ligament Reconstruction

This surgery is also known as a Broström procedure. A lateral ankle ligament reconstruction stabilizes and strengthens your ankle, particularly after experiencing recurring ankle sprains. In this approach, your surgeon will tighten your loose or weakened ligaments. This procedure is often accomplished as an outpatient surgery.

These are just some of the ankle surgeries you might encounter. Contact us today for an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon in Orange City. We want to help you live your best life.