The ankle sprain is the most common injury over all sports. When ankle sprain occurs, structural damage occurs not only to the ligamentous tissue, but also to the nervous and musculotendinous tissue around the ankle complex. It can lead to mechanical ...
The ankle sprain is the most common injury over all sports. When ankle sprain occurs, structural damage occurs not only to the ligamentous tissue, but also to the nervous and musculotendinous tissue around the ankle complex. It can lead to mechanical ankle instability (MAI) having a feeling of instability or functional ankle instability (FAI), feeling of ‘giving away’ or unstable during functional activities. MAI can be easily treated by an operation. However, FAI is too complicated to be treated by and operation. Moreover, it can lead to the chronic ankle instability (CAI). So, the treatment for FAI is necessary.
There have been many studies showing whole-body vibration exercise (WBVE) improves postural control. However, these studies usually reported only short-term effect after WBVE or results after combining with strength training.
Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine the effect of WBVE in patients with CAI. Based on the fact that motor neuron pool excitability comes after whole body vibration, four weeks of WBVE without strength training had performed.
Eight young adults with CAI (age: 22.8±3.23; height: 171.7±8.94; mass: 70.7±13.12) and nine healthy volunteers (age: 25.3±2.45; height:171.0±11.32; mass:66.4±14.11) participated in 4 sessions of WBVE per week and each session took 15minutes. Participants did a single-leg standing an a WBV machine and total 3 measurements were taken (pre, two weeks after and 4weeks after). In order to measure statics postural control ability, single-leg balance test had done and to measure dynamic postural control ability, star excursion balance test had thken. For measuring motor neuron pool excitability, Hoffmann reflex (H-reflex) were used.
The study used 2 ways repeated measure ANOVA test at the .05 significance level to define the effect of WBVE within both group according to the time of exercise.
In results of this study, CAI group showed decrease in SD x and Velocity x and increase in TTB x and mean TTB y during static balance (x: anterior-posterior direction; y: medial-lateral direction). There were no significant difference in dynamic balance and MNPE.
According to this study, 4 weeks of WBVE brings improvements in static postural control to CAI patients without changing resting MNPE.
Applying these findings to patients, having limited range of motion of athletes in isometric training phase, may possibly provide improvement in static postural control ability.
For the future research, there is a need to look for the relation between postural control and MNPE by measuring the H-reflex during the task where requires postural control.