Ibrahim 2005

Methods	Treatment allocation by birth date Non blinded assessment Mean follow‐up: 81 months (60 to 96 months) Loss to follow‐up: 25 patients in total (information on group allocation unavailable) Graft re‐ruptures: not reported
Participants	Kuwait 110 participants Group allocation data for 85 male participants (mean age 22.3 years (17 to 34 years)) with chronic ACL deficiency (mean time from injury to surgery was 9.7 months (4 to 13 months)) PT: n = 40 (mean age unavailable) HT: n = 45 (mean age unavailable)
Interventions	Arthroscopically‐assisted ACL reconstruction with: 1. Patellar tendon (single incision; proximal fixation ‐ EndoButton; tibial fixation ‐ interference screw) versus 2. Hamstring tendon: semitendinosus/gracilis tendons (4 strands; single incision; proximal fixation ‐ EndoButton; tibial fixation ‐ screw and spiked washer or small plate 2 screws and staple)
Outcomes	Mean 81 months follow‐up for: Subjective questionnaire (return to work, satisfaction, giving way episodes, anterior knee pain, return to activity); loss of extension and flexion, Lachman (reported as the proportion of patients with a Grade 1 or negative test); pivot shift (reported as the proportion of patients a pivot glide or negative shift); anterior drawer sign (proportion of patients with grade one or negative test) ; KT‐1000 arthrometer (maximum manual test reported as a proportion of patients); Lysholm (proportion of patients with excellent, good, fair; and as a mean score); Tegner (reported as an average activity level); IKDC (1995); radiographic examination
Notes	No information on loss to follow‐up. Unable to get additional information or data from authors.
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	High risk	Birthdate.
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	High risk
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	High risk
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	High risk	Did not account for lost to follow‐up patients or describe the group allocation for these lost to follow‐up patients.
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	High risk	Did not report standard deviations for mean values (e.g. Lysholm and Tegner scores). No detail with respect to how radiographic assessment was determined.
Other bias	High risk	No information presented to determine any selection bias since inclusion and exclusion criteria were not described. All patients with reported data and included in follow‐up were males. The description of the baseline characteristics (e.g. no average age for each group) between the two groups was insufficient to determine if the groups were comparable.