Limb Dominance Does Not Affect Y-Balance Performance in Young Athletes 12 Weeks After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction.

This is a secondary analysis of a larger study and no sample size calculation for this particular question is reported, so there is no way to tell how small a real difference the study could have detected. Rehabilitation after surgery was not standardised and varied between participants, and the authors say this may have influenced Y-Balance scores at testing. Dominance was defined only by the self-reported kicking leg, which may not reflect dominance during single-leg tasks. Male and female athletes were tested together, which the authors note could matter because of differences in movement strategy. Everyone was an athlete aged 13 to 18, so this says nothing about younger children, adults, or less active people after ACL reconstruction. No control was made for what participants did immediately before testing, which could have affected their scores. 110 athletes met the inclusion criteria and completed the Y-Balance test, but 106 were included in the analysis; the paper does not explain the difference. There was no healthy control group, so the paper cannot say whether these scores are normal for this age.

The authors state they have nothing to disclose and no conflicts of interest. No funding statement appears in the text supplied.

Do not read this as proof that the Y-Balance test cannot detect differences between limbs after ACL reconstruction. It only shows that whether the injured leg was the dominant one made no difference to the scores in this group, and the authors themselves say the test may not be sensitive enough to pick up dominance-related differences.