Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Methodol. Jun 26, 2017; 7(2): 68-72
Published online Jun 26, 2017. doi: 10.5662/wjm.v7.i2.68
Nutech functional score: A novel scoring system to assess spinal cord injury patients
Geeta Shroff, Jitendra Kumar Barthakur
Geeta Shroff, Nutech Mediworld, New Delhi 110016, India
Jitendra Kumar Barthakur, Department of Statistics, Nutech Mediworld, New Delhi 110016, India
Author contributions: Shroff G conceptualized the study, and participated in its design and coordination, helped to draft the manuscript, and contributed to study design and data analysis of the manuscript; Shroff G and Barthakur JK read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of Nutech Mediworld, New Delhi, India.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper.
Data sharing statement: Our all publications are PubMed indexed and are available online (open access).
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Geeta Shroff, MBBS, Founder, Medical Director, Nutech Mediworld, H-8, Green Park Extension, New Delhi 110016, India. geetashroff@hotmail.com
Telephone: +91-11-26565548 Fax: +91-11-46067841
Received: June 14, 2016
Peer-review started: June 17, 2016
First decision: September 2, 2016
Revised: March 8, 2017
Accepted: March 16, 2017
Article in press: March 17, 2017
Published online: June 26, 2017
Processing time: 370 Days and 16.2 Hours
Abstract
AIM

To develop a new scoring system, nutech functional scores (NFS) for assessing the patients with spinal cord injury (SCI).

METHODS

The conventional scale, American Spinal Injury Association’s (ASIA) impairment scale is a measure which precisely describes the severity of the SCI. However, it has various limitations which lead to incomplete assessment of SCI patients. We have developed a 63 point scoring system, i.e., NFS for patients suffering with SCI. A list of symptoms either common or rare that were found to be associated with SCI was recorded for each patient. On the basis of these lists, we have developed NFS.

RESULTS

These lists served as a base to prepare NFS, a 63 point positional (each symptom is sub-graded and get points based on position) and directional (moves in direction BAD → GOOD) scoring system. For non-progressive diseases, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 denote worst, bad, moderate, good and best (normal), respectively. NFS for SCI has been divided into different groups based on the affected part of the body being assessed, i.e., motor assessment (shoulders, elbow, wrist, fingers-grasp, fingers-release, hip, knee, ankle and toe), sensory assessment, autonomic assessment, bed sore assessment and general assessment. As probability based studies required a range of (-1, 1) or at least the range of (0, 1) to be useful for real world analysis, the grades were converted to respective numeric values.

CONCLUSION

NFS can be considered as a unique tool to assess the improvement in patients with SCI as it overcomes the limitations of ASIA impairment scale.

Keywords: Spinal cord injury; American Spinal Injury Association’s Impairment Scale; Nutech functional score; Comparison of assessment; Positional scoring system

Core tip: Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating disease which impacts the patient physically, psychologically and financially. American Spinal Injury Association’s (ASIA) Impairment Scale is a universally accepted scale to assess the SCI, but this scale does not cover all parameters of SCI. The present study focuses on the development of a new scoring system called nutech functional score for patients with SCI and compare it with internationally used scoring system ASIA.