Patient assessment in spine surgery Self-report measures in assessment of patient physical and psychosocial state as well as process and effectiveness of spine surgery

Introduction. A complete, multidimentional patient assessment (including physical and mental health as well as social functioning) is an essential condition of appropriate diagnosis and effective treatment of diseases and associated problems. Aim. To obtain more objective and detailed information concerning patient state self-report measures, such as questionnaires, are used. These methods, used in pre-, peri- and postoperative period enable to monitor treatment process and to assess its effectiveness. Methods and results. In this paper results of questionnaire concerning assessment methods used by polish spine-surgeons were used. Additionally, in order to identifying the most common measures, two journals: Spine and European Spine Journal were reviewed. Both analyses results showed a coherence. The most popular scales were: VAS, ODI and SF-36. Disscussion. In spite of a big number of self-report measures, their use in polish spine treatment centers is still not sufficient. Contribution to that state may be a limited availability and information concerning questionnaires, as well as lack of Polish adaptation. Conclusions. Patient assessment supplemented with questionnaires data would enable to obtain detailed and objective assessment of spine surgery effectiveness, as well as to monitor treatment process and, in a preoperative period – to identify psychosocial risk factors. Furthermore, development of algorithm concerning assessment of patients undergoing spine surgery would allow to compare techniques and methods used in different medical centers.