Effect of Reconstructive Surgery and Functional Brace Treatments on Kinesthesia in Patients with Acute Anterior Cruciate Ligament Tear

Objective: Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear is one of the most common knee injuries. Kinesthesia after ACL tear is impaired. In this study, using hybrid generalized estimation equations (GEE) can be efficient method in analyzing correlated data, we try to evaluate the effects of reconstruction surgery and functional brace with controlled confounding factors in improving the patients’ kinesthesia with ACL tear. Materials & Methods: This Quasi-experimental study using simple non-probabilistic sampling, have been conducted on 60 patients with acute ACL tear. To evaluate of kinesthesia motion sense, continuous passive motion machine was used .The test speed was 0.5 degrees per second. Response variable in this study was the kinesthesia motion sense. Surgical variables, brace, eyes, limbs, BMI, the dominant side, disease side and age as independent variables were considered. R 2.13.0 software was used for fitting hybrid GEE model. Results: The reconstructive surgery in patients is effective in improving the kinesthesia. (OR: 13.94, CI:95%, 7.486 - 25.997, P<0.001). But the functional brace does not improve the kinesthesia motion sense (OR: 0.73, CI:95%, 0.52 - 1.033, P=0.076). The odds to get threshold of motion sense in patients with left dominant side in normal conditions, if the disease side is right, equal 0.019 times the left side. (OR: 0.019, CI:95%, 0.010 - 0.035, P<0.001), and no significant relationship between patients’ limbs and kinesthesia motion sense indicates that affected limbs can also affect healthy limbs’ kinesthesia motion sense (OR: 0.97, CI:95%, 0.806-1.015, P=0.728). Conclusion: The variables included in the study, variables of reconstruction surgery, disease side, interaction of disease side and the dominant side showed a significant relationship.