Grant: Project Grant

Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy (DCM) is a common condition in which the spinal cord is compressed by arthritis in the neck leading to hand weakness, numbness and difficulties walking. Presently, there are no high-quality tools to measure the severity of patient symptoms. This limits the ability of doctors and researchers to monitor patient symptoms, understand the effects of surgery and gauge the impact of new treatments. Our research group has performed preliminary work to develop a new questionnaire to better assess the extent to which patients with DCM are impacted by their symptoms. However, before this new tool can be applied in healthcare and research settings, it requires more extensive testing. Specifically, we will need to assess the extent to which the new questionnaire correlates with the results of other tests (validity), the extent to which repeat assessments in the same patient yield similar results (reliability) and the ability of the measure to capture changes, both small and large, in patient symptoms (sensitivity). This above testing will be performed in 210 DCM patients at 10 different hospitals throughout Canada, all of which are very experienced in the treatment of this condition. Successful completion of this research will go a long way to help doctors treat and counsel patients with DCM and may also assist in the identification of new less invasive treatment options.