• Clin J Sport Med · May 2006

    Comparative Study

    Knee immobilization in the immediate post-operative period following ACL reconstruction: a survey of practice patterns of Canadian orthopedic surgeons.

    • Laurie A Hiemstra, Kim Veale, and Treny Sasyniuk.
    • Mineral Springs Hospital, Banff, AB, Canada. hiemstra@banffsport-med.ca
    • Clin J Sport Med. 2006 May 1; 16 (3): 199-202.

    ObjectiveThis study was designed to determine the practice patterns and rationale for knee immobilizer use in immediate post-operative period following an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction.DesignDescriptive cross-sectional survey.SettingCanada.ParticipantsA random sample of 50% of Canadian orthopedic surgeons registered with the Canadian Orthopaedic Association (COA).Main Outcome MeasureSelf-reported survey responses regarding knee immobilizer use, surgeon characteristics, graft type and type of practice.ResultsComplete survey response rate was 36.1% (122/338). There was a lack of consensus regarding knee immobilizer use; 47.7% of responding surgeons use a knee immobilizer in the immediate post-operative period while 52.3% do not. There were no trends in characteristics such as fellowship training, number of years in practice and type of practice between surgeons who use and do not use a knee immobilizer. The reported reasons for immobilization were: pain reduction in the post-operative period (51.6%), graft site protection (38.7%), maintaining full extension (19.4%) and habit (12.9%). The length of time the immobilizer was used ranged from 5-42 days.ConclusionsThe lack of consensus reported in the current study and published literature reflects a lack of scientific evidence in the area of post-operative knee immobilization. The need for a randomized clinical trial to assess the efficacy of knee immobilizer use after ACL reconstruction is evident. The authors recommend using peri-operative pain as an outcome measure in future studies investigating immobilization in the immediate post-operative period.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…

What will the 'Medical Journal of You' look like?

Start your free 21 day trial now.

We guarantee your privacy. Your email address will not be shared.