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Deltoid Ligament Anatomy

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0:00

We're on the ankle.

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Deltoid.

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Good news, bad news.

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Bad news.

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It's complex.

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Good news.

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Even when it's injured, we

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we hardly ever operate on it.

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Remember when you invert the foot,

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you're going to compress the deltoid.

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The deltoid is going to swell from

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this accordion of compression.

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And you don't want to be operating on something

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like that, which is actually a contusive

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phenomenon rather than a distractive phenomenon.

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And even if it is cut, most of

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the time is not operated on.

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So, you don't have to get particularly

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upset about the nuances of deltoid injuries.

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That being said,

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let's still dive into the nuances.

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I'm gonna start out by showing you a ligament.

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The ligament does not come

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from the actual ankle joint.

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It's right here.

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I've drawn it in blue, and it's known as

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the superior calcaneonavicular ligament.

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Now, the reason this is important is because

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the medial collateral is going to have

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a ligament to strut that attaches to it.

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In other words, there's going to be from up

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here to down here, a ligamentous attachment.

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Now that being said, I hate to do this to you,

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but I have to.

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There's a smaller ligament

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that parallels it underneath.

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It's a little bit thinner.

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It's called the medial oblique

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calcaneofibular ligament.

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And there's even a smaller one beneath that.

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And it's called the inferior plantar

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longitudinal calcaneofibular ligament.

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So there's actually three of them.

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But I'm really only interested

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in this main one up here.

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The superior one.

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Now, let's look at the deep deltoid

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and the superficial deltoid.

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The deep deltoid, it's so easy.

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Let's change color a little bit.

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Let's make it a little thicker.

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And we've got, in the back,

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the posterior deep deltoid.

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We've got, in the front,

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the anterior deep deltoid.

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We're done with the deep.

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Oh, that's easy.

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That's great.

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Okay, now, let's start over again and see what

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else we've got that's layered on top of that.

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We're gonna have a series of ligaments that runs

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from front to back, and we're gonna start out

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with this first one, the tibionavicular ligament.

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So I'm going to make that

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orange, tibionavicular ligament.

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Then, we're going to have a tibiospring ligament.

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The tibiospring ligament,

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we'll make that one blue.

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Since we already made the spring ligament blue,

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there's the spring ligament.

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So it's going to go to the ligament.

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So we've got from the bone to the ligament.

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a ligamentous structure.

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Then after that, let's make

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another color just to be creative.

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We've got the tibiocalcaneal ligament,

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and that one's going to go to the calcaneus.

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It's going to go right back here.

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Then we've got one more in the back,

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and that is going to be the superficial

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posterior tibiotalar ligament.

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Maybe I'll use orange just for consistency,

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and now we've got that. So we've got 1, 2, 3,

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4 superficial ligaments, and 2 very simple,

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what I call KISS, keep it simple, stupid,

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deeper, anterior in green, and posterior

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in orange, deep portions of the deltoid.

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That's the arrangement of the deltoid.

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Now of the superficial ones,

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if I had to give one most favored nation

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status, which one would I pick?

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I'm gonna pick my favorite color, purple.

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It'd be this one.

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It would be the tibiospring ligament.

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Let's look at some MR actual

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cases in a separate vignette.

Report

Description

Faculty

Stephen J Pomeranz, MD

Chief Medical Officer, ProScan Imaging. Founder, MRI Online

ProScan Imaging

Tags

Musculoskeletal (MSK)

MSK

Foot & Ankle

Acquired/Developmental

AI Technologies

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