[Surgical management of fresh injuries of the outer ligament of the upper ankle joint in local anesthesia].

Fresh, isolated external ligament ruptures in adults have been surgically treated almost without exception under local anaesthesia for more than a year now at the Department of Surgery of the Rhenish-Westphalian Technical University (RWTH) at Aachen. No complications due to anaesthesia developed in these 119 patients; all of them expressed great satisfaction at this mode of surgical approach. What is more: this method is less costly and requires less personnel than surgery under peridural anaesthesia or intratracheal (intubation) anaesthesia. Hence, in the authors' opinion, isolated fresh ruptures of the outer ligaments of the ankle joint should be operated on more often under local anaesthesia than is actually being done at present.