Treatment of Syndesmotic Disruption With Anatomic Distal Tibiofibular Ligament Augmentation

A syndesmosis is a slightly movable fibrous joint in which bones such as the tibia and fibula are joined together by connnective tissue. Together, they form a bracket shaped socket, covered in hyaline cartilage. This socket is known as the mortise. A syndesmotic or 'high 'ankle sprain is when the ligaments binding the distal tibia and fibula at the ankle joint are injured or torn. This can lead to the ankle joint and syndesmoses to being malaligned, subluxed or widened. Subsequently, this can lead to ankle arthritis and deformity with persistent pain and swelling about the ankle.

There are no generally accepted treatment guidelines. Thus, there still remains considerable controversies regarding diagnosis, classification and treatment of syndesmotic injuries. Syndesmotic malreduction is the most common indication for early re-operation after ankle fracture surgery, and widening of the ankle mortise by only 1 mm decreases the contact area of the tibiotalar joint by 42%. Outcome of ankle fractures with syndesmosis injury is worse than without, even after surgical syndesmotic stabilization. This may be due to a high incidence of syndesmotic malreduction revealed by increasing postoperative computed tomography controls. Therefore, even open visualization of the syndesmosis during the reduction maneuver has been recommended. Thus, the most important clinical predictor of outcome is consistently reported as accuracy of anatomic reduction of the injured syndesmosis. In 2017 a new syndesmotic InternalBraceTM technique for improved anatomic distal tibiofibular ligament augmentation to protect healing of the injured native ligaments was introduced. This technique involves direct surgical inspection of the syndesmoses for injury and subsequent augmentation.

This study hopes to evaluate the results of this direct syndesmotic augmentation/stabilization to help determine if this is perhaps a safer, and possibly more effective method.

This prospective study is designed to evaluate 32 consecutive patients that did have an acute or subacute syndesmotic injury that necessitated surgical stabilization and used at least in part the InternalBrace technique. There was not a restriction of age, gender, or race.

2 patients who were labeled as having severe syndesmotic disruption and had additional screw fixation. Also, 5 patients had dynamic syndesmotic fixation in addition to direct InternalBrace augmentation of the AITFL.