syndesmosis

Sports reporting in recent years has really enhanced the general public’s knowledge of anatomy. It would not be at all surprising to hear a primary school child observe: ‘Oh, he’s done his ACL’, with reference to the now extremely familiar anterior cruciate ligament. Now another injury-prone ligament is getting an airing, perhaps because of over-used playing fields or overpacked playing schedules (both of course due to the ‘Rona).

 Syndesmosis is an anatomical term which has been around since the early 1700s.  It is formed from a Greek word sydesmos ‘something that binds things together’, so, in this context, a ligament.

 Football players are constantly straining, bending and breaking bits of their bodies.  This new injury has the full name distal tibiofibular syndesmosis: distal because it is located at the far end of the leg near the ankle, tibiofibular because this particular syndesmosis is between the two bones of the leg, the tibia and the fibula, and syndesmosis because it is a connection between those two bones formed by ligaments.  Sports journalists seem to be settling for syndesmosis injury.