Abstract

Objective: Identifying the role of psychological issues such as fear on function, in various orthopedic conditions, can help improve the rehabilitation process, especially in chronic recurrent injuries such as chronic ankle instability (CAI). Therefore we designed this study to identify fear measures capable of explaining clinical and laboratory measures of function in individuals with CAI compared with coper and healthy participants.

Methods: This is a laboratory Cross-sectional study. Seventy-five participants with CAI, copers and healthy control (25 in each group) attended a single testing session. Participants completed health-related quality of life questionnaires related to fear and physical function and dynamic postural control tests.

Results: The result of ANOVA test, showed that fear scores were higher and functional scores were lower in the CAI group in almost all variables, compared to the other groups. Based on linear regression analysis, in the CAI group, fear had a significant effect (p<0.05) on the subjective variables (foot and ankle ability measures and foot and ankle outcome scores), but fear had no significant (p>0.05) effect on objective variables.

Conclusion: Greater fear associated with lower health-related quality of life. Measures of fear contributed to a significant proportion of the variance associated with subjective measures of function in those with CAI. This should be taken into consideration when treating individuals with CAI, possibly with doing cognitive behavioral therapy in addition to physical therapy.