Table 3.
Comparison of objective methods of outcome assessment.
| Strengths | Weaknesses | |
|---|---|---|
| Surgical outcomes e.g. mortality, peri-operative complications | - Easy to measure | -May not be appropriate in the MBD population |
| - Infrastructure already in place to record these | ||
| Performance-based outcome measures | - Improved sensitivity versus PROMs e.g. ability to distinguish pain from function73 | - Ecological validity – do they measure real-world function?9 |
| - Improved validity to PROMs9 | - Hawthorne effect: participant acts differently because they are being observed73,74 | |
| - Don’t show ceiling effects9 | ||
| Physician-reported outcome measures | - Gold standard for measuring function9 | - Expensive and not broadly available9 |
| - Measure objective surgical outcomes e.g. strength, range of movement (ROM)57 | - Doesn’t necessarily consider outcomes important to patients | |
| - Minimise ceiling effects9 | - Clinicians overestimate outcome vs patients30 | |
| - No educational/language barriers | - Poor inter-observer reliability73 | |
| Quality indicators of treatment outcome | - Allow comparison between different centres/countries8,75 | - Significant effort required to develop77 |
| - Can be used to identify complex patients who may benefit from tertiary orthopaedic oncology opinion76 | - Need to be validated for specific population77 | |
| - Constantly changing78 | ||
| - Can only measure outcomes that are routinely recorded in practice77 |