- LeBron James went down with a pretty unique-looking ankle injury and wasn't able to continue in the Lakers' recent game. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Dr. Brian Sutterer and this is your number one source for learning about the unique medical side of the world of sports. The office looks a little bit different today. I'm actually not at home, but whenever I saw this news happen, I still wanted to give you guys a quick update to teach you guys about what happened here because it's a bit of a unique ankle sprain situation. As always, if you enjoy learning about this unique side of sports, please consider subscribing to the channel, hit that thumbs up button if you enjoy this, and let's get started. Here's the play where LeBron got hurt and, of course, we're paying attention to his right ankle, and actually his right knee a little bit. But as you see here, he plants with that right ankle and then as the Hawks player kind of comes in and hits him from the side, of course, number one, we're gonna call this a valgus force because it's a force that's pushing his knee inward. And then when that happens, it's gonna put some stress on his knee, which we'll talk about in a minute. But, number, one causes this primarily eversion mechanism of an injury to his right ankle. This is an example of an eversion ankle sprain, compared to the classic inversion ankle sprain that we see much more commonly, so this is definitely a unique situation. With an eversion ankle sprain, that inner portion of the ankle and the foot are gonna come down towards the ground, as opposed to with an inversion, it's gonna be the outer portion of the ankle that's gonna get stressed. The other thing to watch here too with LeBron's ankle is it does look like there's a little bit of external rotation of his foot. If we look at the alignment of his tibia, his lower leg, it's kind of pointed straight at us and then his right foot is pointed off to the side. So that's going to be that external rotation, which can have more implications for something known as a high ankle sprain. Now, I mentioned the knee because as we go through this whole sequence, remember that defender came in and the first contact was that valgus load onto LeBron's knee. This type of an injury can certainly also injure the MCL, which is gonna be that ligament that sits here on the inside of the knee. As that player comes in and pushes LeBron's knee inward, that's gonna pull and stress that MCL, causing potential injury. So for the ankle, it's primarily an eversion mechanism, atypical from the classic inversion, but there's also a little bit of an external rotation component that makes me worried about a possible high ankle sprain. Let's look at our biodigital anatomy tool here next. And so the first ligaments I'm gonna show are the classic lateral ankle sprain ligaments. Those are these guys that are gonna sit here on the outside portion of the ankle. Those aren't the ones we're worried about this time. For the ones we're concerned on, we have to go to the inside of the ankle to a ligament complex known as the deltoid ligament complex. This is a much broader kind of fanning out section of ligaments that, again, are gonna run on the inside of the ankle, as opposed to the outside of the ankle. So these ligaments can be stretched in this position but then we also, because of that external rotation, have to think about this guy right here. That's that AITFL, the high ankle sprain ligament. That's more injured whenever you get this external rotation component of the foot. Essentially when the foot externally rotates, it causes the talus to move and if your talus is surrounded by that tibia and fibula, when the talus rotates, it pushes those apart, which is gonna stress that AITFL, or high ankle sprain ligament. Let's play that through one more time now that we've looked at our anatomy. So the right ankle that we're focusing on here, valgus load that comes in, puts a little bit of stress on the knee, starts to put some load on the ankle, that ankle is gonna evert, so meaning the inside portion's gonna come down closer to the court, there's also gonna be that external rotation, which can stress that high ankle sprain ligament, and so those are the things that we really have to worry about here. His return ultimately will depend on, of course, how bad the ligament damage is, but then also if there is in fact injury to that MCL in the knee and then if this is more of a high ankle sprain, as opposed to just the traditional lower ankle sprain. I expect him to get an MRI to look at these different ligaments and hopefully we'll hear more about the knee and then we'll have a better sense of how long LeBron could be out. That's it for the video, everybody. I hope this was educational and I hope you enjoy the unique office set up for one-time here. Let me know, as always, any questions or comments down below and until next time, we'll see you later. Bye. (hypnotic electronic music)