Foot & Ankle

The ankle accounts for approximately 75% of all sports related injuries. The vast majority are soft tissue injuries such as ligament sprains and will respond to conservative treatment. The key to effective treatment is having the skills base required for accurate diagnosis. Many cases requiring surgical intervention can be addressed with arthroscopy. Adjunct arthroscopy can often improve the results of traditional open procedure results. As an experienced arthroscopist and sports physician, Dr. Byrd utilizes many of these skills in the management of these disorders.

A particularly vexing problem in high performance athletes is the fracture of the bone along the outside border of the foot (fifth metatarsal bone), which can jeopardize an athlete’s career and be a severe problem for non-athletes. Dr. Byrd developed a fixation system for repairing these fractures that greatly enhances the ability for orthopaedists to perform this procedure with reliably successful results. It has been adopted for use by many professional team physicians for use in their athletes including the NFL and NBA.

A proper understanding of its normal biomechanics is imperative to understand and treat disorders of the foot and ankle. This complex and intricate linkage of joints is often incompletely understood by orthopaedic surgeons. Dr. Byrd has developed award winning educational programs on this subject, which have been widely distributed through the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and other sports organizations.