The Relationship Between Preoperative PROMIS Scores With Postoperative Improvements in Physical Function After Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion

• Published in: Neurospine 2020, 17(2), , pp.398-406
• Main Authors: Parrish, James M., Jenkins, Nathaniel W., Hrynewycz, Nadia M., Brundage, Thomas S., Singh, Kern
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: anterior cervical discectomy and fusion; Original; pain measurement; patient-reported outcome measures; patient-reported outcomes measurement information system; spine; 신경외과학
• ISSN: 2586-6583; 2586-6591
• DOI: 10.14245/ns.1938352.176

Objective Assess preoperative Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) physical function (PF) scores and differences between preoperative and postoperative PROMIS-PF scores for patients undergoing anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF). Methods After Institutional Review Board approval, a prospectively maintained surgical registry was retrospectively reviewed for elective spine surgeries of nontraumatic, degenerative pathology between 2015–2018. Inclusion criteria were primary or revision, single-level ACDF procedures. Multilevel procedures and patients without preoperative surveys were excluded. A preoperative PROMIS score cutoff of 35 divided patients into PROMIS-PF score categories (e.g., ≥ 35.0, < 35.0). Categorical and continuous variables were evaluated with chi-square tests and t-tests. Linear regression analyzed PROMIS-PF score improvement. Results Eighty-six patients were selected, the high and low PROMIS-PF subgroups only differed in mean age (49.1 vs. 41.3, p = 0.002). Significant differences in PROMIS-PF scores were observed among high and low preoperative PROMIS-PF score subgroups at 6 weeks (p = 0.006), 12 weeks (p = 0.006), and 6 months (p = 0.014). Mean differences between preoperative and postoperative PROMIS-PF scores were significantly different between the high and low PROMIS-PF subgroups at 6 weeks (p = 0.041) and 1 year (p = 0.038). A significant negative association was observed between preoperative PROMIS scores and magnitude of improvement at the 6-week postoperative time point (slope = -0.6291, p < 0.001). Conclusion Patients with low preoperative PROMIS-PF scores demonstrated greater improvements at 6 weeks and 1 year. Clinicians should consider patients with low preoperative PROMIS-PF scores to be in the unique position to potentially experience larger postoperative improvement magnitudes than patients with higher preoperative PROMIS-PF scores.