Challenges and Opportunities for the Use of Patient-Reported Outcome Measures in Orthopaedic Pediatric and Sports Medicine Surgery

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are essential tools in assessing treatment response, informing clinical decision making, driving healthcare policy, and providing important prognostic data regarding patient health status change. These tools become essential in orthopaedic disciplines, such as pediatrics and sports medicine, given the diversity of patient populations and procedures. However, the creation and routine administration of standard PROMs alone do not suffice to appropriately facilitate the aforementioned functions. Indeed, both the interpretation and optimal application of PROMs are essential to provide to achieve greatest clinical benefit. Contemporary developments and technologies surrounding PROMs may help augment this benefit, including the application of artificial intelligence, novel PROM structure with improved interpretability and validity, and PROM delivery methods that provide increased access to patients resulting in greater compliance and data acquisition yields. Despite these exciting innovations, several challenges remain in this realm that must be addressed to continue to advance the clinical usefulness and subsequent benefit of PROMs. This review will highlight the opportunities and challenges surrounding contemporary PROM use in the orthopaedic subspecialties of pediatrics and sports medicine.