Is There a Disadvantage to Early Physical Therapy After Multiligament Surgery for Knee Dislocation? A Pilot Randomized Clinical Trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Multiligament knee injuries, though rare, can be profoundly disabling. Surgeons disagree about when to initiate rehabilitation after surgical reconstruction due to the conflicting priorities of postoperative stability and motion. QUESTIONS/PURPOSES: (1) Does early or late initiation of physical therapy after multiligament knee surgery result in fewer postoperative manipulations? (2) Does early versus late physical therapy compromise stability postoperatively? (3) Does early initiation of physical therapy result in improved patient-reported outcomes, as measured by the Multi-ligament Quality of Life (ML-QOL) score? METHODS: Between 2011 and 2016, 36 adults undergoing multiligament repair or reconstruction were prospectively enrolled in a randomized controlled trial and randomized 1:1 to either early rehabilitation or late rehabilitation after surgery. Eligibility included those with an injury to the posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) and at least one other ligament, as well as the ability to participate in early rehabilitation. Patients who were obtunded or unable to adhere to the protocols for other reasons were excluded. Early rehabilitation consisted of initiating a standardized physical therapy protocol on postoperative day 1 involving removal of the extension splint for quadriceps activation and ROM exercises. Late rehabilitation consisted of full-time immobilization in an extension splint for 3 weeks. Following this 3-week period, both groups engaged in the same standardized physical therapy protocol. All surgical reconstructions were performed at a single center by one of two fellowship-trained sports orthopaedic surgeons, and all involved allograft Achilles tendon PCL reconstruction. When possible, hamstring autograft was used for ACL and medial collateral ligament reconstructions, whereas lateral collateral ligament and posterolateral reconstruction was performed primarily with allograft. The primary outcome was the number of patients undergoing manipulation during the first 6 months. Additional outcomes added after trial registration were patient-reported quality of life scores (ML-QOL) at 1 year and an objective assessment of laxity through a physical examination and stress radiographs at 1 year. One patient from each group was not assessed for laxity or ROM at 1 year, and one patient from each group did not complete the ML-QOL questionnaires. No patient crossover was observed. RESULTS: With the numbers available, there was no difference in the use of knee manipulation during the first 6 months between the rehabilitation groups: 1 of 18 patients in the early group and 4 of 18 patients in the late group (p = 0.34). Similarly, there were no differences in knee ROM, stability, or patient-reported quality of life (ML-QOL) between the groups at 1 year. CONCLUSION: With the numbers available in this study, we were unable to demonstrate a difference between early and late knee rehabilitation with regard to knee stiffness, laxity, or patient-reported quality of life outcomes. The results of this small, randomized pilot study suggest a potential role for early rehabilitation after multiligament reconstruction for knee dislocation, which should be further explored in larger multi-institutional studies. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level II, therapeutic study.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.012 | 0.001 |
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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".