By Susan Rapp
SAN FRANCISCO — An International Delphi Study conducted by The International Taskforce on Diagnosis and Management of Lumbar Spinal Stenosis recently identified key questions to ask when getting a patient’s history that may help clinicians more accurately diagnose lumbar spinal stenosis.
“This study showed that with just six questions, clinicians become 80% certain that the person has clinical diagnosis of lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS),” Christy C. Tomkins-Lane, PhD, said in a presentation at the International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine Annual Meeting, here. “This is a pragmatic question set that can be used in a number of settings — research settings, teaching [and] potentially in the clinical setting — and provides standardized criteria.”
The task force initially agreed upon a list of 14 clinical questions deemed important in the diagnosis of LSS and understanding a patient’s history, based on the input of physicians with at least 20 years’ experience with LSS. An online recursive study was performed to narrow down the possible items to those that were most clinically relevant, and then the items were tested.
