A new study published in Spine examines the best practices for measuring patient outcomes for spinal stenosis.
The researchers compared responses for the Core Outcome Measures Index with condition-specific Swiss Spinal Stenosis Measure in 91 patients. The researchers found:
1. The external criteria of success scores correlated with the change scores from the baseline to 12 months after surgery in COMI and SSM similarly.
2. The area under the curve was similar for the COMI change score and SSM subscales. The researchers used receiver operating characteristics with global treatment outcome or SSM-sat dichotomized as external criterion.
3. The researchers concluded that COMI was as responsive as SSM.
4. COMI could detect important changes in the lumbar spinal stenosis with the benefit of reducing the response burden for the patient.
5. COMI also facilitated outcome comparison with other spinal pathologies.