Accuracy and reproducibility of a retrospective outcome assessment for lumbar spinal stenosis surgery

BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders

Research Article

Petri Sipola¹  Sakari Savolainen²  Ville Leinonen²  Pekka Kuittinen²  Heikki Kröger³  Veli Turunen⁴  Tapani Heikkilä⁵  Olavi Airaksinen⁵  Timo Juhani Aalto⁶ 

[1] Department of Clinical Radiology, University of Eastern Finland and Kuopio University Hospital, Kuopio, Finland;Department of Neurosurgery, Kuopio University Hospital, Kuopio, Finland;Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, Kuopio University Hospital and Bone and Cartilage Research Unit, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland;Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, Kuopio University Hospital, Kuopio, Finland;Department of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, Kuopio University Hospital, Kuopio, Finland;Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland;Kyyhkylä Rehabilitation Center and Hospital, Mikkeli, Finland;

关键词: Lumbar spinal stenosis;    Surgical treatment;    Outcome measures;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2474-13-83

 received in 2011-11-03, accepted in 2012-05-29,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundRetrospective assessment of surgery outcome is considered problematic. The aims of this study were to evaluate the reproducibility and accuracy of a retrospective outcome assessment of lumbar spinal stenosis surgery with reference to prospective outcome scale measurements.MethodOutcome of surgery from 100 lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) patients was evaluated retrospectively from patient files of a 3-month outpatient visit performed according to a standard clinical protocol by two independent researchers. In the retrospective analysis, outcome was graded as 2 = good if the clinical condition had clearly improved, 1 = moderate if it had just slightly improved, 0 = poor if it had not improved or was even worse than before the surgical treatment (Retrospective 3- point scale). A prospectively assessed Oswestry Disability Index questionnaire (ODI), Visual analogue pain scale (VAS) and a patient satisfaction questionnaire were used as references of standards. Reproducibility of the measurements was evaluated.ResultsThe retrospective 3-point scale correlated with ODI (r = 0.528; P < 0.001) and VAS (r = 0.368; P < 0.001). The agreement was better in the good and poor outcome than in the moderate outcome. Retrospective 3-point scale demonstrated substantial intra-rater and inter-rater repeatability (κ = 0.682, P < 0.001 and κ = 0.630, P < 0.001, respectively).ConclusionsRetrospective assessment of spinal surgery outcome is highly reproducible. Accuracy is highest in the patients with poor and good surgical result.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Kuittinen et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012