ArticleBMC sports science, medicine & rehabilitation2025
Late-stage anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction rehabilitation in the United Kingdom: an online survey of National Health Service physiotherapists.
Article in BMC sports science, medicine & rehabilitation, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundLate-stage Anterior Cruciate Ligament reconstruction (ACL-R) rehabilitation aims to help patients to return to sports (RTS) and their previous activity levels and minimise reinjury rates. In the United Kingdom, National Health Service (NHS) physiotherapists lead post-ACL-R rehabilitation programs. This survey aimed evaluate NHS physiotherapists’ perspectives of the resources available, and their confidence to deliver, late-stage ACL-R rehabilitation. The secondary aim was to identify the RTS tests conducted by NHS physiotherapists on ACL-R patients.
methodsAn online cross-sectional survey of NHS physiotherapists was conducted. Proportions and percentages summarised respondents’ perspectives of the resources (equipment, space, and time) available, and their confidence, to deliver late-stage ACL-R rehabilitation components (strength testing, Neuromuscular control, movement quality analysis, plyometrics, sports specific drills, and psychological readiness evaluation) and RTS testing. Spearman signed rank test evaluated the strength and direction of any correlation between physiotherapists’ perspectives of available resources, clinical experience, and their confidence to perform late-stage rehabilitation. The RTS tests used across each component of late-stage ACL-R rehabilitation were recorded.
results102 physiotherapists completed the online survey between June-July 2022. Approximately half of respondents (53%) believed most ACL-R patients (>60%) RTS. Approximately half to three quarters of respondents agreed that there were adequate resources available to perform strength (range of 49-60% respondents agreed), neuromuscular control (63-72%), movement quality analysis (53-56%) and plyometric (48-52%) components of late-stage ACL-R rehabilitation. Less than half of respondents agreed there were sufficient resources to perform sports specific drills (18%-38%), psychological readiness evaluation (20-46%), and RTS testing (26%-33%). Most respondents were confident to deliver the exercise-based components of ACL-R late-stage rehabilitation (e.g. strength testing; range 68-92%) and decide when patients were ready to RTS (75%). Conversely, most respondents were not confident to perform psychological readiness evaluation, which was moderately positively correlated with their perspectives of resources. Respondents used a wide variety of non-evidence based RTS tests across all components of late-stage ACL-R rehabilitation.
conclusionTargeted training in evidence based late-stage rehabilitation ACL-R protocols and improved access to appropriate resources maybe required to enable NHS physiotherapists to deliver optimal late-stage ACL-R rehabilitation.
trial registrationN/A
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.