Outcome After Spine Trauma: towards uniform terminology and measurement instruments

In this thesis we studied the consequences of spine trauma and the following recovery process from the patients’ and clinicians’ perspectives. It provides the long-term follow-up results of the reliability of the AO Spine Patient Reported Outcome Spine Trauma (AO Spine PROST) and the clinicians’ view to the clinically tested AO Spine Clinician Reported Outcome Spine Trauma (AO Spine CROST). Next, we studied the consequences when the recovery process does not go as expected. We tried to reach a uniform and internationally accepted term and definition for a clinically relevant deformity after a trauma to the spine utilizing an extensive Delphi process. Finally, we analyzed a patient cohort who have apparently not reached a full recovery and fulfill the criteria for our newly developed definition of ‘Posttraumatic Spinal Deformity’ in order to understand if any specific factors could be determined at the time of trauma which would have predicted this outcome.