The clinical practice of family medicine physicians in diagnosing and managing lateral ankle sprain
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Background: Lateral ankle sprain (LAS) is the most common sports injury seen in family medicine clinics and often occurs during sports activity. Despite its frequency, few studies have examined how family medicine physicians approach LAS. Objective: This study aims to evaluate how family medicine physicians diagnose and manage LAS in their practice. Methods: An electronic cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted from March 2024 to July 2024 in the Riyadh Second Health Cluster, Saudi Arabia. A total of 165 responses were obtained (response rate: 61.1%) through convenience sampling. Data were analyzed in R (version 4.3) using descriptive statistics, Chi-square tests, and thematic analysis for open-ended responses. Results: More than half of the participants (59.4%, n = 98) did not perform plain radiography for LAS diagnosis, although almost all (96.4%, n = 159) considered the Ottawa ankle rules (OAR). Splinting was the most common immobilization method, used in 73.5% of cases ( n = 86). Overall, 70.9% ( n = 117) immobilized the ankle, 72.7% ( n = 120) recommended rehabilitation, and 69.1% ( n = 114) advised postimmobilization support. A significant difference in immobilization duration was found among residents, senior registrars, and consultants (P = 0.007), whereas consultants recommend more extended periods. Regarding return-to-sport criteria, 17.6% ( n = 29) reported having no specific criteria. Conclusion: This study reflects the current diagnostic and management practices of family medicine physicians, demonstrating high adherence to the OAR, frequent use of immobilization and rehabilitation, and variation in immobilization duration. These findings highlight the need for continuous education and guideline dissemination to promote more standardized care.
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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 | 0.004 | 0.028 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 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".