CORR Insights®: The Knee Society Short Form Reduces Respondent Burden in the Assessment of Patient-reported Outcomes

P atient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are particularly relevant in evaluating orthopaedic procedures like total joint arthroplasty because pain relief and functional improvement are key outcomes of this surgery [5]. The original Knee Society Score, which was published in 1989 and adopted widely in the orthopaedic community, clearly demonstrates the early recognition of the importance of PROMs in assessing the effectiveness of TKA [4]. The new Knee Society Knee Scoring System, which was developed in 2012, aimed at making the system more patientcentered by increasing the number of patient questions as well as enhancing its psychometric properties [6, 7]. The need for validated PROMs has grown substantially in recent years as a result of the increasing emphasis on patient-reported outcomes as measures of quality of care. Despite the strides made in this field, challenges in developing PROMs continue to revolve mainly around two issues: (1) Collecting all the necessary information without overburdening the patient, and (2) establishing the clinical meaningfulness of PROMs score. Considerable work has been done to address the former issue. Shorter forms of many PROMs have been created. Additionally, computeradaptive approaches, which can get more information from patients using fewer questions, have also been developed for some PROMs. Less work, however, has been done on the issue of clinical meaningfulness, which limits the translation of PROMs findings to clinical practice as hard endpoints and quality measures. The current paper by Scuderi et al. aimed to create a short form of the new Knee Society Knee Scoring System in order to reduce respondent burden. The authors applied sophisticated statistical methods that are informed by clinical guidance to carefully select items into the shorter form. As a result, they successfully reduced the new Knee Society Knee Scoring System from 17 items to six items. The authors established strong correlations between the original form and the shorter form domains and reasonable correlations with the SF-12 and KOOS scores. Finally, the authors This CORR Insights is a commentary on the article ‘‘The Knee Society Short Form Reduces Respondent Burden in the Assessment of Patient-reported Outcomes’’ by Scuderi and colleagues available at: DOI: 10.1007/s11999-015-4370-2. The author certifies that he, or any member of his immediate family, has no funding or commercial associations (eg, consultancies, stock ownership, equity interest, patent/ licensing arrangements, etc.) that might pose a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted article. All ICMJE Conflict of Interest Forms for authors and Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research editors and board members are on file with the publication and can be viewed on request. The opinions expressed are those of the writers, and do not reflect the opinion or policy of CORR or The Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons. This CORR Insights comment refers to the article available at DOI: 10.1007/s11999015-4370-2. H. Ghomrawi PhD, MPH (&) Division of Comparative Effectiveness and Outcomes Research, Department of Healthcare Policy and Research, Weill Medical College, Cornell University, 425 East 61st Street, Suite 301, New York, NY 10065, USA e-mail: hag2008@med.cornell.edu CORR Insights Published online: 3 July 2015 The Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons1 2015