Outcome Measures and Assessment Tools in Spinal Cord Injury

In rehabilitation context, outcome measures are frequently used to assess the characteristics of inpatients and outpatients before any intervention and determine whether patients have made meaningful changes in their recovery process and may influence the intensity and duration of care. Researchers use outcome measures during the investigation of the efficacy and effectiveness of a given treatment intervention, in observational studies as well as in research studies, such as outcome research and randomized control trials.

In literature, a strong heterogeneity of validated tools among various national contexts can be seen. This heterogeneity can be assumed to have a positive meaning if one thinks about the multiple needs of the clinical context, however, clinicians have conflicting or incomplete information available to use when making decisions in patient care. Furthermore, the lack of consistency and the deficiency of standardization in outcome assessment has hindered comparative research and meta-analysis.

This certainly leads to improve the tools to be more suitable for various cultural contexts. Further investigation of outcome measures would benefit patients, researchers and clinicians. It is important for the development of clinical practice and research that practical and appropriate measures are universally accepted; this would allow comparisons and meta-analysis of high quality randomized controlled trials.

Therefore, the aim of this Special Issue is to provide clinicians and researchers with evidence-based recommendations regarding what outcome measures should be used in clinical and rehabilitative setting for individuals with Spinal Cord Injury, attracting Review articles which describe the current state of the art and validation studies that culturally adapt current assessment tools providing new information about psychometric properties of existing or new assessment tools.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

●       Systematic Reviews and meta-analysis of existing assessment tools in Spinal Cord Injury

●       Validation studies of existing assessment tools

●       Psychometric studies measuring psychometric characteristics of assessment tools

●       Comparative studies of different assessment tool measuring the same area

●       Cross-sectional studies for cultural adaptation in specific countries of assessment tools