While there are many different scoring systems available for foot and ankle specialists to use to assess or demonstrate the effectiveness of treatments , the AOFAS , while it is an unvali date d scoring system , is the most commonly used scoring system in this review .
This review presents data about commonly used patient reported outcomes systems in foot and ankle surgery .
The goal of this systematic review is to determine the most commonly used outcome measurement tools used by foot and ankle specialists and determine their limitations , such as whether they are vali date d , have floor/ceiling effects , and so on .
An Evaluation of the Use of Retrospectively Acquired Preoperative AOFAS Clinical Rating Scores to Assess Surgical Outcome after Elective Foot and Ankle Surgery
The use of retrospectively acquired preoperative AOFAS rating scores in clinical research to assess the outcomes of elective foot and ankle surgery has not been vali date d. The data obtained utilizing this methodology may misrepresent the results and lead to spurious conclusions . This investigation compared preoperative AOFAS Ankle-Hindfoot scores obtained before and after surgery from patients who had undergone elective surgery to determine if retrospectively acquired scores match those collected prospect ively . Only two out of 47 patients ( 4 % ) recalled identical AOFAS scores . The mean difference between the preoperative scores ( preoperative score obtained after surgery minus preoperative score obtained before surgery ) was −5.3 points . Fifteen patients ( 32 % ) had preoperative scores that differed by 20 points or more . Kappa statistics found little agreement among the five elements that comprised the two preoperative scores when responses obtained before and after surgery were compared to one another . The results suggest that  preoperative clinical rating scores  obtained after elective surgery are a poor predictor of the patient 's preoperative condition and that studies which employ retrospectively acquired preoperative AOFAS clinical rating scores may overestimate the benefit of surgery
While there are many different scoring systems available for foot and ankle specialists to use to assess or demonstrate the effectiveness of treatments , the AOFAS , while it is an unvali date d scoring system , is the most commonly used scoring system in this review .
This review presents data about commonly used patient reported outcomes systems in foot and ankle surgery .
The goal of this systematic review is to determine the most commonly used outcome measurement tools used by foot and ankle specialists and determine their limitations , such as whether they are vali date d , have floor/ceiling effects , and so on .