BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Ankle sprains are among the commonest injuries in sports, in daily routine activities, in accidents and in medical emergency rooms, affecting mainly physically active young adults. The aim of this study was to systematically review the literature in order to identify the existence of clinical procedures to assess functional performance of individuals with chronic ankle instability, and to identify the existence of studies that objectively assess the presence of functional performance deficits in these subjects. METHOD: A database search was conducted in MEDLINE, EMBASE, LILACS. This review included studies that described tools that evaluated functional performance in individuals with chronic ankle instability. Two reviewers conducted the research and independently assessed the methodological quality and extracted relevant data of each included study. RESULTS: A total of six studies were included, from which three were considered of high quality. The tests described in the literature for performance evaluation in unstable individuals were "Cocontraction test", "Shuttle run test", "Agility hop test", "Triple-hop crossover for distance", "6-m shuttle run" , "Figure-of-8-hop," "Side hop," "Up-down-hop," "Single hop," "Multiple hop test" and "Star excursion balance test." Only the two last tests were able to detect functional performance deficits in individuals with ankle instability. CONCLUSION: It was observed that until the present time, only the "Multiple Hop Test" and "SEBT" tests were valid and reliable as instruments able to detect deficits of performance in individuals with chronic ankle instability.
ankle; joint instability; review; task performance and analysis
