Prospective observational study of 42 ACL reconstruction patients evaluating the measurement properties of a four-test hop battery at 16 and 22 weeks postoperatively. The study asks whether these tests reliably detect true functional change during rehabilitation, and whether changes correlate with patient-reported recovery.
Hop testing was widely used after ACL reconstruction before this paper, but without published measurement error data, clinicians had no way to know whether a change in score reflected true improvement or just noise.
This paper gives you the numbers to act on: use the full four-test battery, always run a practice session first, and require the overall composite limb symmetry index to change by at least 7% before concluding a patient has genuinely progressed. A score that moves from 80% to 86% is ambiguous — from 80% to 90% is real.
When you see a patient whose composite limb symmetry index is rising but still below 90%, this paper is why you track the overall composite rather than any single test. It is the most reliable, has the lowest detection threshold, and correlates best with how the patient actually feels.
The authors note that these thresholds apply only when testing follows the described order with a prior practice session. Skipping the practice day invalidates the reliability estimates entirely.
Prospective observational study of 42 ACL reconstruction patients evaluating the measurement properties of a four-test hop battery at 16 and 22 weeks postoperatively. The study asks whether these tests reliably detect true functional change during rehabilitation, and whether changes correlate with patient-reported recovery.
Hop testing was widely used after ACL reconstruction before this paper, but without published measurement error data, clinicians had no way to know whether a change in score reflected true improvement or just noise.
This paper gives you the numbers to act on: use the full four-test battery, always run a practice session first, and require the overall composite limb symmetry index to change by at least 7% before concluding a patient has genuinely progressed. A score that moves from 80% to 86% is ambiguous — from 80% to 90% is real.
When you see a patient whose composite limb symmetry index is rising but still below 90%, this paper is why you track the overall composite rather than any single test. It is the most reliable, has the lowest detection threshold, and correlates best with how the patient actually feels.
The authors note that these thresholds apply only when testing follows the described order with a prior practice session. Skipping the practice day invalidates the reliability estimates entirely.