Patient Reported Outcomes in Patients Who Stop Following Up: Are They Doing Better or Worse Than the Patients That Come Back?

Conclusion.
Patients undergoing minimally invasive lumbar surgery—in particular lumbar fusions—who are lost to follow-up and responded to subsequent email and phone interviews showed greater improvements in self-reported outcomes than those who continued to follow-up. Thus, our results suggest that a substantial subset of patients who are lost to follow-up do not fare worse than those who do follow-up. However, an opposite response cannot be excluded in those who did not respond to email and phone interviews.
Level of Evidence: 3

Source: Spine - September 25, 2020 Category: Orthopaedics Tags: HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH Source Type: research