With an ageing population, the elderly and frail population are increasingly sustaining cervical spine fractures. There is a need to develop of a COS specific to the needs of this population to help standardise research and guide treatment selection. Our aim is to garner expert opinion in order to define a COS applicable to the elderly or frail population sustaining cervical spine fractures.
ContributorsDr Phillip Correia Copley 1,2,3 BSc(Hons), BMBS, MRCS
Dr Julie Woodfield 1,2, PhD, FRCS
Dr Ellie Edlmann 4,5 PhD, MRCS
Dr Michael Poon 1,2,3,6 MSc, MRCS
Dr Sadaquate Khan 1,2,3 MD FRCS (SN)
Dr Paul M Brennan 1,2,3 PhD FRCS (SN)
1 Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
2 Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
3 Edinburgh Spinal Surgery Outcome Studies Group, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
4 Southwest Neurosurgical Centre, Derriford Hospital, Plymouth, United Kingdom.
5 University of Plymouth Faculty of Health: Medicine, Dentistry and Human Sciences, Plymouth, United Kingdom.
6 Centre for Medical Informatics, Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Disease Category: Health care of older people, Orthopaedics & trauma
Disease Name: Cervical spine fractures
Age Range: 65 - 120
Sex: Either
Nature of Intervention: Any
- Clinical experts
- Consumers (patients)
- Families
- Patient/ support group representatives
- Researchers
- Service providers
- Service users
- COS for clinical trials or clinical research
- COS for practice
- Consensus meeting
- Delphi process
- Literature review
- Survey
- Systematic review
A systematic literature review has been carried out to examine the outcomes used in studies assessing adults with cervical spine fractures. This will help inform our Delphi survey process.
The Delphi survey process will include all key stakeholders, from the range of multidisciplinary clinicians that manage these patients both in the hospital and community, to the patient’s carers and importantly the patients themselves. We expect that an agreed COS will be defined from the responses gathered in the Delphi process that can be applied to future studies of elderly or frail patients sustaining these injuries. We will also aim to generate a consensus on the method of measurement of the outcomes included and the timing of assessment of the outcome following injury. This will help to provide more comparable cohorts in future research endeavours and allow a better understanding of the impact of interventions on clinical outcomes.