Foot & ankle injuries & surgery

The foot is a complex biomechanical structure that cannot be reproduced by modern technology! It consists of about 30 different joints, some as small as having a few millimetres of contact area. The ankle joint is the largest joint here but even this is quite small compared to its larger counterparts like hip and knee joints in the lower limb. However, the ankle transmits exactly the same amount of load that a hip or knee does taking a much larger share of the load per unit surface area. Whereas hip and knee joints frequently become arthritic with advancing age, ankle remains to function well for a longer duration unless it is damaged by injury or infection.

A number of conditions affect the foot and ankle, many of them related to trauma. For example, ankle sprain is one of the most common reasons patients seek emergency treatment for. It is estimated that the incidence of ankle sprains is one per 80000 population, which means there are about 80-90 ankle sprains take place in a city of the size of Glasgow each day!

Although many problems around the foot & ankle resolve with time, they often need assessment by qualified practitioners. Physiotherapy and podiatry treatment are often effective in the early stages of a disease process. However, many conditions need surgical intervention when there is failure to improve on simple measures.

80-90% of the operative procedures around foot & ankle are carried out on a day surgery basis and even the remainder of the patients usually are discharged after an overnight admission in the hospital. The increasing use of local anaesthetic block of nerves at the time of surgery and minimally interventional key hole surgical procedures have made this possible in the modern foot & ankle surgery practice.