SPEEDING UP RETURN TO PLAY IN ATHLETES WITH ANKLE FRACTURES

Abstract

Injuries are prevalent in the sports world, affecting athlete’s careers. Ankle fractures are a common injury that can delay an athlete’s return to play for months. A lot of research is done to look at different methods of treatments to speed up return to play. Bone stimulators are a recent treatment being used for healing ankle fractures, along with other methods such as stem cell therapy. For my honors senior thesis, I worked with Dr. Latt to get a closer look at what other methods of ankle repair there are after surgery, specifically to accelerate return to play in athletes. We investigated different outcome measures, including pain score, function score, time to return to play, etc. Overall, methods involving physical therapy, such as orthotics and compression socks, showed to have the highest measure of success in speeding up return to play. Stem cell therapy and PRP therapy are good supplements to speed up healing, but do not have a significant effect in repairing major injuries, such as ankle fractures. Finally, bone stimulators are promising, but further studies are needed to prove their efficacy.