Spine
Spine
5 years ago

Spine and Thoracic Height Measurements Have Excellent Interrater and Intrarater Reliability in Patients With Early Onset Scoliosis

Michael, Nicole, Bloch, Nikki, Erickson, Mark, Gibbons, Steven, Garg, Sumeet, Carry, Patrick, O’Donnell, Courtney
Study Design. Reproducibility of measurements. Objective. This study investigates the reliability and standard error of measurement of spine and thoracic height radiographic measurements in patients with early onset scoliosis (EOS). Summary of Background Data. Spine and thoracic height radiographic measurements are often used as a surrogate for pulmonary development in patients with EOS. There is limited literature validating the reliability of spine and thoracic height measurements in the EOS population. Methods. Using pilot data, we determined measuring 49 unique radiographs would provide 80% power to obtain a 95% confidence interval (CI) width of 0.05 for the interclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). A random sampling strategy, stratified by underlying diagnosis from the Classification of Early Onset Scoliosis (C-EOS), was used to distribute the diagnoses in the study sample. Two attending pediatric spine surgeons, two pediatric orthopedic fellows, and two research assistants measured coronal spine (T1-S1) and thoracic (T1-T12) height on digital radiographs using imaging software (Surgimap; Nemaris, Inc, New York) on two separate occasions at least 3 weeks apart. Order of images was randomized for the second iteration. Linear mixed model regression analyses were used to estimate interrater and intrarater reliability. Results. The study sample included subjects (N = 48) with idiopathic (N = 17, 35%), congenital (N = 16, 33%, 1 patient excluded), neuromuscular (N = 11, 23%), and syndromic (N = 4, 8%) scoliosis. Overall interrater reliability estimates for spine height (ICC: 0.894, 95% CI: 0.847–0.932) and thoracic height (ICC: 0.890, 95% CI: 0.844–0.929) were excellent. Intrarater reliability estimates for spine height (ICC: 0.906, 95% CI: 0.830–0.943) and thoracic height (ICC: 0.898, 95% CI: 0.817–0.938) were also excellent. Conclusion. There is excellent interrater and intrarater reliability for radiographic measurements of spine and thoracic height in the EOS population at our institution. Level of Evidence: 2

Publisher URL: https://journals.lww.com/spinejournal/Fulltext/2018/02150/Spine_and_Thoracic_Height_Measurements_Have.14.aspx

DOI: 10.1097/BRS.0000000000002314

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

  • Download from Google Play
  • Download from App Store
  • Download from AppInChina

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.