Automated Speech Analysis to Identify Clinical, Anatomical, and Pathological Variants of Primary Progressive Aphasia.

The hip abductor complex, consisting of the gluteus medius and minimus muscles and their respective tendons, plays a crucial role in hip abduction and gait stability [–]. While acute injury is possible, tears of the hip abductor complex are often insidious in onset and degenerative in nature, most frequently occurring in women between the fourth and sixth decades of life [, –]. Nonoperative management is often first-line treatment, with modalities including activity modification and physical therapy to optimize joint biomechanics, as well as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medications and adjuncts such as corticosteroid injections []. Operative management is generally indicated for when symptoms are refractory to conservative measures, or for acute, traumatic tears or those associated with remarkable weakness or gait alteration []. Open and endoscopic techniques have been employed for hip abductor repair, with or without biologic augmentation, and have a profound impact on patient outcomes with improvements in pain, functional status, strength, and return to activity [, , , ]. Postoperative physical therapy is essential to optimize outcomes, as structured exercise programs can enhance strength and reduce pain within 4 to 12 months of rehabilitation []. Despite the effectiveness of post-operative physical therapy, the availability of consistent therapy protocols is lacking. Existing protocols can be highly variable, as many are sourced from individual expert-based recommendations rather than evidence-based trials or studies [, ]. In addition to the variability, many rehabilitation protocols have vague guidelines that lack detail, impacting both physical therapists and patients []. Prior investigations have found noteworthy variability in the timing and content of rehabilitation protocols after a variety of upper and lower extremity procedures; however, none have examined such protocols following hip abductor tendon repairs [–]. To address this gap, this study aimed to capture rehabilitation protocols that are easily available to physicians and physical therapists and through a descriptive analysis, demonstrate how these resources vary in both content and timing. Highlighting these inconsistencies may help to guide future evidence-based studies on appropriate timing and content of rehabilitation protocols to optimize clinical outcomes and return to activity. Additionally, identification of rehabilitation components with the most or least uniform initiation between protocols may guide future outcome-based studies to determine the impact of initiation date adherence on clinical outcomes. The purpose of this study was to evaluate readily accessible U.S. online physical therapy protocols for open and endoscopic hip abductor repairs and to assess the variability in post-operative rehabilitation protocols. It was hypothesized that there would be pronounced heterogeneity among both content and timing of postoperative restrictions and rehabilitation exercises in publicly available rehabilitation protocols following hip abductor repairs.