In the first of two articles, MIKE SMITH looks at the evidence on diagnosing and managing this common ankle injury, and on the value of patient education

An internet and library literature search was undertaken to discover current best practice in ankle sprain management. A Medline search was undertaken for the terms ‘ankle injury’, ‘ankle sprain’ and ‘ankle research’ using the Ovid interface. Databases after 1990 were used and further articles were found as a result of these initial searches. Further information was discovered on the emergency medicine web site, www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/acad-ae-med/, which had links to other sites.