A Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing the Effectiveness of Functional Knee Brace and Neoprene Sleeve Use after Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Despite a lack of evidence for their effectiveness, functional knee braces are commonly prescribed to patients after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction. PURPOSE: This trial was conducted to compare postoperative outcomes in patients using an ACL functional knee brace and patients using a neoprene knee sleeve. HYPOTHESIS: Patients using a brace will have superior outcomes than those using a sleeve. STUDY DESIGN: Randomized controlled clinical trial; Level of evidence, 1. METHODS: One hundred fifty patients were randomized to receive a brace (n = 76) or neoprene sleeve (n = 74) at their 6-week postoperative visit after primary ACL reconstruction with hamstring autograft. Patients were assessed preoperatively, then 6 weeks and 6, 12, and 24 months postoperatively. Outcome measures included disease-specific quality of life (Anterior Cruciate Ligament-Quality of Life [ACL-QOL] Questionnaire), anterior tibial translation (KT-1000 arthrometer side-to-side difference), the single-limb forward hop test (limb symmetry index), and Tegner Activity Scale. Outcomes at 1 and 2 years were compared after adjusting for baseline scores. Subjective ratings of how patients felt while using the brace/sleeve were also collected for descriptive purposes using a questionnaire. Four a priori directional subgroup hypotheses were evaluated using tests for interactions. RESULTS: There were no significant differences between brace (n = 62) and sleeve (n = 65) groups for any of the outcomes at 1- and 2-year follow-ups. Adjusted mean differences at 2 years were as follows: -0.94 (95% confidence interval [CI], -7.52 to 5.64) for the ACL-QOL Questionnaire, -0.10 mm (95% CI, -0.99 to 0.81) for KT-1000 arthrometer side-to-side difference, -0.87% (95% CI, -8.89 to 7.12) for hop limb symmetry index, and -0.05 (95% CI, -0.72 to 0.62) for the Tegner Activity Scale. Subjective ratings of confidence in the knee provided by the brace/sleeve were higher for the brace group than the sleeve group. Subgroup findings were minimal. Adverse events were few and similar between groups. CONCLUSIONS: A functional knee brace does not result in superior outcomes compared with a neoprene sleeve after ACL reconstruction. Current evidence does not support the recommendation of using an ACL functional knee brace after ACL reconstruction.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".