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In summation, the article speaks about a test of 150 people in which they had either received a functional CAL race or a neoprene sleeve 6-weeks post operation and were tested a few times in the next 1-2 years. The tests involved subjective questions for the subject, measurements, and functional analysis. Through these tests, this article results showed how the knee brace and neoprene sleeve are both helpful, even though they have no superior rating over each other. Also, the testers do not support the recommendation of using a functional CAL brace after surgery from the data that they collected.
Most of this article is objective, but some of their own input is placed in the conclusion when they do not recommend the brace. The information that they had gathered is reliable, but they did not test it against those who did not use CAL braces at all so that is what is not helpful for my paper. Davis, A. G. , Patrimonies, B. G. , Engineers, C. D. , Pugh, K. , & Hart, J. M. (2011). Quadriceps Function After Exercise in Patients with Anterior Excruciate Ligament- Reconstructed Knees Wearing Knee Braces. Journal of Athletic Training, 46(6), 615- 620.
The information in this article states that wearing a neoprene sleeve or a knee sleeve neither helped nor hurt quadriceps muscle function in aerobic exercises. In this experiment, there were 14 people who participated (9 women and 5 men) in three sessions in which they were measured based on central activation ratio and voluntary isometric torque. They used the brace, neoprene sleeve, and nothing for each test. This article is helpful since it uses a control, no bracing, to compare the brace and neoprene sleeve to.
It is not completely reliable since only 14 people were tested and they were between the ages 22-44 so people outside of this age range may have different results. This article is not bias since it references the data when drawing conclusions. To compare this source to the article written by Birmingham, this one is more useful since it compares the sleeve and brace to a control and it also measured a specific part of the leg in comparison to different movements and measurements along the whole leg. Mary, H. , SST;keen, P. , Munch, E. , Welter, M. , Bernstein, A. , Squeaked, N. & Soothe, A. (2014). Brace or no-brace after CAL graft? Four-year results of a prospective clinical trial. Knee Surgery, Sports Dermatology, Arthroscopy, 22(5), 1156-1162. This article is based off of a four-year study on 64 subjects who had CAL construction and were either put in one of three braces or were not put in a brace at all. The results of this study were based off of the information from 81% of the people since some had dropped out, so it is not as reliable in comparison to people not dropping out, but there were still enough people for a study to continue.
The results had stated that there was no difference among the different braces as well as not wearing a brace in comparison to wearing a brace. This study concluded that there was no advantage to bracing your knee after surgery after revisiting the patients four years later. This article is helpful in showing how bracing affects the early stages after surgery in comparison to using the brace for returning to exercises. Stanley, C. , Creighton, R. , Gross, M. , Garrett, W. , & You, B. (2011). Effects off Knee Extension Constraint Brace on Lower Extremity Movements after CAL Reconstruction.
Clinical orthopedic & Related Research, 469(6), 1774-1780. Dot:10. 1007/ SASSES-010-1633-9 This article is a test on CAL braces seeing the effects on the lower extremity movements after surgery. The study used six men and six women that were three and a half to six and a half months post operative. The test included walking, descending down stairs, and Jogging with and without a knee brace. The data that was collected showed that the brace increased the flexing angle in the knee when the foot made contact with the ground.
This information brought the tester to the conclusion that it should decrease loading since it did reduce the peak posterior ground reaction force in some functional activities, but not all of them. This article has some bias in the conclusion, but it is helpful otherwise. The information that was collected is reliable even if the conclusion is not. This article compared to others is ere helpful since it shows how the braces help in functional activities to decrease the loading on the knee compared to the muscle functions.