The Knowledge and Adherence of Saudi Arabian Physiotherapists to Evidence-Based Practice Guidelines and Recommendations for the Treatment of Lateral Ankle Sprain
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: The most common musculoskeletal injury to the lower extremities that occurs during sports and leisure activities is lateral ankle sprain (LAS). However, it appears that physiotherapists are using more non-evidence-based treatments. So, this study examined the knowledge and adherence of Saudi physiotherapists to the LASs’ clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) and recommendations. Methods: A questionnaire was used for this cross-sectional study. Two clinical examples, using the Ottawa Ankle Rules (OAR), were described: one positive (vignette II) and one negative (vignette I). The treatment that the physiotherapists would employ was described. The CPGs and recommendations were categorized as follows: partially followed, partially not followed, and not followed. Then, they used a 1-5 Likert scale to indicate their level of agreement with various CPG and guideline statements. Results: 386 physiotherapists (62.2% men and 37.8% women) completed the survey. Acute LAS with negative OAR was the clinical vignette. I. 2.07% of them reported "following" the recommended treatments, 39.64% "partially following,” 8.55% "partially not following, and 52.59% "not following." An acute LAS with positive OAR was the clinical vignette II, 5.18% of them reported "following" the recommended treatments, 18.65% "partially following" and 76.17% "not following". The statements for which a 70% consensus was attained were two statements (18.18%). The third and fifth statements were among those that the participants agreed upon, which were related to the assessment phase. Conclusion: The first-line suggested therapy for acute LAS management was unknown to the Saudi physiotherapists. Moreover, three-quarters of them were unable to recognize positive outcomes after radiation (OAR). The current findings highlight a gap between evidence and practice in LAS management.
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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 | 0.005 | 0.025 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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 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".