Reviewer’s comment concerning “Development of the AOSpine patient reported outcome spine trauma (AOSpine PROST): a universal disease-specific outcome instrument for individuals with traumatic spinal column injury” (by S. Sadiqi, et al. (2017) Eur Spine J;)

Excerpt

As medical professionals we must be able to anticipate short- and long-term outcomes of the treatment we have chosen. This is particularly pertinent for spine injuries where the patient was presumably healthy before the accident. The expectation of the AOSpine PROST is to offer a foolproof instrument to achieve this goal, however, this ambitious project is confronted by human reality. They accept several limitations of the development process for their outcome instrument especially tested on 25 Dutch eligible patients. Questions had to be explained to some patients and the responses to questions about general function of daily living or energy level motivation were estimated on an average score. Painkillers were not used as an item; analyses as test–retest reliability were not performed in this pilot study. The average time of cognitive interview was 14.4 mn (range 8–20). The real value of this instrument needs to carry a more consistent message before rushing to publication. …