Structures of the Ankle Joint and Foot (Nursing)

00:01 Now we're getting pretty far down there, we're down to the ankle and subtalar joints.

00:06 That's right ankle joint is really what we were talking about with the plantar flexion dorsiflexion.

00:10 But there's also, because there's so many different bones here, something called a subtalar joint or a joint below a bone called the talus.

00:19 So here's the distal end of the tibia, and the distal end of the fibula.

00:23 And here's that ankle bone called the talus.

00:27 And then I already said the other name for Achilles tendon is calcaneal tendon because this is the name of the heel bone, if you will, that it attaches to.

00:36 They're the equivalent of carpal bones, but in the foot instead of carpals, we call them tarsals.

00:44 So movements at the ankle joint, again, despite the fact that all the muscles that do this, we call them extensors we call this dorsiflexion.

00:54 And all the muscles we call flexors actually cause something called plantar flexion.

00:59 So again, raising the toes up is dorsiflexion, pointing them down as plantar flexion at the ankle joint.

01:06 At the subtalar joint because it's shaped a little bit differently.

01:10 This is the joint where we have those funky movements, inversion, and eversion.

01:20 So we're really getting almost to the tips here, we're at the dorsum of the foot, which is from an anatomic position, the superior anterior-ish portion of the foot.

01:31 The part you can see not the part you're standing on, those would be the soles of the feet or the plantar surface.

01:37 So here we see something very equivalent to what we saw in the hand, we see these really long tendons coming from further up in the leg from the extensor digitorum longus.

01:49 And we also have the extensor hallucis longus going to the big toe hallucis been our big toe equivalent of pollicis for our thumb.

01:58 We have another retinaculum or ban of connective tissue holding these tendons down here called the extensor retinaculum.

02:08 And we can see the extensor digitorum brevis and extensor hallucis brevis, being much shorter.

02:17 We also have our anterior tibial artery coming down towards the foot, forming an important landmark called the dorsalis pedis artery.

02:26 And this is clinically relevant because it's so superficial that it's very easily palpated during a physical exam, and when you're trying to assess circulatory problems for people especially down in their feet where it's common to have circulatory problems.

02:41 One of the common things you'll check is a dorsalis pedis artery pulse.

02:47 Finally, we're at the bottom or soul of the foot also called the plantar surface of the foot.

02:53 And as we said our equivalent of carpal bones down in the foot are the tarsal bones.

02:59 Similarly to the hand beyond that we have metatarsals and beyond that we have phalanges.

03:06 Same thing with the phalanges up in the hand, we have a proximal, middle and distal except for the big toe which just has a proximal and distal.

03:17 And this is where our tibial nerve is going to terminate.

03:21 And we're going to see this lateral plantar nerve and medial plantar nerve providing sensation to the soul the foot.