Comparison of surgical intervention with functional treatment for acute ruptures of lateral ankle ligmant: a meta-analysis

Objective: To compare the effect of surgical intervention on functional treatment.

Methods: By searching the MEDLINE (1966 to October 2011), EMBASE (1980 to October 2011), the Chinese Biomedical Database Databases (1980 to October 2011), a total of 9 related RCT studies comparing surgical intervention with functional treatment were included in our study. RevMan software was taken to analyze the data.

Results: These 9 studies involved a total of 1 268 mostly young adults, including 580 patients with surgical treatment and 688 patients with functional treatment. The results showed the stability of ankle activity in surgical treatment group was better than that in functional treatment group, with the OR and 95% CI of 0.72 (0.52-0.99). No significant difference was found in the recurrence of the surgical and functional group. However, the movement disorder in the surgical treatment suggested increased risk than that in functional group, with the OR and 95% CI of 2.39 (0.98-5.85). Surgical group found more complication than the function group, such as deep vein thrombosis, deep venous thrombosis, tenderness of scar and sensory loss.

Conclusions: In conclusion, our finding showed that surgical treatment could gain better efficacy than functional treatment, but may bring more complication. Therefore, further large sample size RCT is warranted.