What's up with your inside ankle pain, and what can you do about it?

Get a diagnosis, get some advice, get it sorted

Pain on the inside of your ankle can be due to a multitude of things, but in reality, inside ankle pain can be easily identified and is more than likely due to one of just a few diagnoses. Here at the OFC we've got together to bring you the most relevant information to help you identify what is going on with ankle as well as what you can do about, what we (as osteopaths) can do about it and finally what modern medicine has to offer. 

As with most physical complaints, its better to stop them sooner rather than later and that's why we've developed a complete guide for rehabilitating your ankle pain, whatever the diagnosis might be. Watch the video below.

Was it traumatic?

If you damaged your ankle and you new it immediately, this helps us in deciding what your inside ankle pain is. The chances are you've either damaged your deltoid ligament, something which is quite difficult to do, or you've fractured your medial malleolus. You could also have sprained your tib/fib syndesmosis. Either way, traumatically damaging the inside of your ankle is largely more difficult and less frequent than damaging the outside, but when it does happen, its usually more serious.

Syndesmosis sprain (high ankle sprain) 

The ligaments that support the syndesmosis are needed to stabilize it, and it is these ligaments that are stretched or torn when this type of injury occurs. Ankle sprains can injure the syndesmosis. The ligaments can also be injured when the ankle is broken. 

Deltoid ligament strain

As mentioned above, deltoid ligament tear is not a common injury that often results from severe trauma leading to outward twisting of the ankle. Aside from an acute injury, a deltoid ligament tear can also result from excessive overuse or wear and tear of the ligament.

Fracture

Immediate and severe pain, Swelling, Bruising, Tender to touch, Cannot put any weight on the injured foot, Deformity particularly if the ankle joint is dislocated as well 

Was it is insidious / come on slowly?

If the injury has come on slowly over a period of time, or you could not determine the exact cause of the injury but you have recently been doing more exercise or started a new exercise, the chances are you have irritated the soft tissues causing inside ankle pain. This could be something like a tibialis anterior tendinopathy, or even plantar fasciitis.