Is stress radiography necessary in the diagnosis of acute or chronic ankle instability?
GROUND: Clinicians often use the talar tilt (TT) and anterior drawer (AD) stress x-rays to diagnose acute or chronic mechanical ankle instability. However, the wide range of TT and AD values in normal and injured ankles makes interpretation of the test results difficult. OBJECTIVE: To critically review the literature and determine the accuracy of stress radiography in the diagnosis of mechanical ankle instability. DATA SOURCES: MEDLINE was searched for relevant articles published since 1966 using MEDLINE subject headings (MeSH) and textwords for English articles related to ankle injuries and radiography. Additional references were reviewed from the bibliographies of the retrieved articles. The total number of articles reviewed was 67. Of these, 8 studies met criteria for inclusion and were analyzed. STUDY SELECTION: Only clinical studies that used surgical exploration as the gold standard for diagnosing lateral ligament rupture were evaluated for this study. Cadaver or laboratory studi
