Background: Activities and their importance for daily living vary widely be
tween patients. Patient-specific measurement of functional status means tha
t the evaluation is focused on activities that an individual patient select
ed as main complaints.
Objective: To develop and to evaluate a patient-specific approach for measu
ring functional status in low back pain.
Study Design: A cohort of 150 patients was measured at baseline and 12 week
s later.
Methods: The feasibility of the patient-specific approach was evaluated in
patients with nonspecific low back pain. We used effect size statistics to
evaluate responsiveness in terms of sensitivity to change and specificity t
o change.
Results: The selection procedure for the main complaint was feasible but la
bor intensive. The patient-specific approach was able to detect changes in
complaints that were highly relevant for the patients. The patient-specific
approach appeared to be more sensitive to change but less specific to chan
ge compared with other instruments.
Conclusions: On the basis of this study it would be valuable to apply the p
atient-specific approach in future studies, also with the aim of further ev
aluation. in the meantime a number of practical problems of the method need
to be resolved.