The ankle is a modified hinge joint consisting of tibial plafond, medial and lateral malleolus, talus and many soft tissue structures, which play important role in weight bearing and walking.

Ankle joint injury is determined by patients age, quality of bone, the position of a ankle at trauma, direction and degree, velocity of force. Hence, it is very important to understand the mechanism of trauma in order to make definite diagnosis and proper treatment.

The authors analysed 71 cases(66 patients) of the ankle fracture which were admitted and treated in Orthopaedic Department, Chonnam University Hospital from Aug. 1985 to June 1994.

The most common type of the ankle fracture was supination external rotation type(17 cases, 23.9%), by the classification of Lauge-Hansen, and type C(30 cases, 42.3%) by the AO classification.

According to the criteria of Meyer using the clinical and radiological result, pronation-external rotation type gave the best result and the worst results obtained from pronation-dorsiflexion type.

We concluded that classification of Lauge-Hansen & AO were useful in the diagnosis and treatment of ankle fracture and accurate reduction and rigid internal fixation of the lateral malleolus, distal fibula and distal tibiofbular diastasis was important in treatment of the ankle fracture.