A Systematic Review of Patient-reported Outcome Measures Used in Circular Frame Fixation

Introduction: Clinical studies in orthopedics are using patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) increasingly. PROMs are often being designed for a specific disease or an area of the body with the aim of being patient centered. As yet, none exists specifically for treatment with circular ring external fixation devices. Aim: The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive systematic review of the published literature related to the use of PROMs in patients that underwent treatment with circular frames (Ilizarov or Hexapod Type Fixators). Methods: An online literature search was conducted for English language articles using the Scopus. Results: There were 534 published articles identified. After initial filtering for relevance and duplication, this figure reduced to 17, with no further articles identified through searching the bibliographies. Exclusion criteria removed two articles resulting in 15 articles included in the final review. Out of the 15 studies identified, a total of 10 different scoring measures where used. The majority of studies used a combination of joint/limb-specific and generic health PROMs with an average of 2.5 per study. No paper specifically discussed all eight PROMs criteria when justifying which PROMs they used. Conclusion: Our findings indicate that none of the PROMs analyzed in this systematic review are truly representative of the health outcomes specific to this patient group and, therefore, propose that a PROM specific to this patient group needs to be developed.