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. 2016 Aug 2;11(8):e0157263.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0157263. eCollection 2016.

Reported Outcome Measures in Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy: A Systematic Review

Benjamin M Davies  1 , Maire McHugh  1 , Ali Elgheriani  2 , Angelos G Kolias  1 , Lindsay A Tetreault  2 , Peter J A Hutchinson  1   3 , Michael G Fehlings  2 , Mark R N Kotter  1   4   2   3
Affiliations

Reported Outcome Measures in Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy: A Systematic Review

Benjamin M Davies et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Objective: Degenerative cervical myelopathy [DCM] is a disabling and increasingly prevalent group of diseases. Heterogeneous reporting of trial outcomes limits effective inter-study comparison and optimisation of treatment. This is recognised in many fields of healthcare research. The present study aims to assess the heterogeneity of outcome reporting in DCM as the premise for the development of a standardised reporting set.

Methods: A systematic review of MEDLINE and EMBASE databases, registered with PROSPERO (CRD42015025497) was conducted in accordance with PRISMA guidelines. Full text articles in English, with >50 patients (prospective) or >200 patients (retrospective), reporting outcomes of DCM were eligible.

Results: 108 studies, assessing 23,876 patients, conducted world-wide, were identified. Reported outcome themes included function (reported by 97, 90% of studies), complications (reported by 56, 52% of studies), quality of life (reported by 31, 29% of studies), pain (reported by 29, 27% of studies) and imaging (reported by 59, 55% of studies). Only 7 (6%) studies considered all of domains in a single publication. All domains showed variability in reporting.

Conclusions: Significant heterogeneity exists in the reporting of outcomes in DCM. The development of a consensus minimum dataset will facilitate future research synthesis.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. PRISMA flow diagram of the search strategy.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Trends in published research.
Stacked line graph of year of publication of identified studies. Retrospective studies are in blue, prospective studies in red and the number of RCTs indicated by the black line. [Pro: Prospective, Retro: Retrospective, RCT: Randomised Controlled Trial]. The number of publications has increased over time, including those deemed of higher quality (prospective and randomised).
Fig 3
Fig 3. Variation in chosen functional outcomes overtime.
Each bar represents 100%. The use of the most prevalent outcome measures (JOA, Nurick, NDI, mJOA, JOACMEQ) are reported as percentages for each time period.
Fig 4
Fig 4. Geographical variation in chosen functional outcomes.
Each bar represents 100%. The use of the most prevalent outcome measures (JOA, Nurick, NDI, mJOA, JOACMEQ) are reported as percentages for each territory.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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