• Lisa Goudman, Philippe Rigoard, Maxime Billot, Ann De Smedt, Manuel Roulaud, ConsortiumDiscoverDDiscover Consortium, Brussels, Belgium., Maarten Moens, and Discover Consortium.
• Department of Neurosurgery, Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussel, Brussels, Belgium; STIMULUS consortium (reSearch and TeachIng neuroModULation Uz bruSsel), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium; Center for Neurosciences, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium; Pain in Motion Research Group, Department of Physiotherapy, Human Physiology and Anatomy, Faculty of Physical Education and Physiotherapy, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium; Research Foundation-Flanders, Brussels, Belgium. Electronic address: lisa.goudman@vub.be.
• Neuromodulation. 2023 Jan 1; 26 (1): 157163157-163.

IntroductionNowadays, the success of spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is evaluated separately in patients who have previous experiences with standard SCS and in SCS-naïve patients. Nevertheless, it is yet to be evaluated whether both patient groups are effectively distinct patient groups. Therefore, the aims of this study are twofold: 1) Are there clusters in the data to distinguish between both patient groups? 2) Can we discriminate both patient groups based on routinely collected clinical parameters?Materials And MethodsBaseline data from the Discover study were used, in which 263 patients with persistent spinal pain syndrome type 2 were included (185 neurostimulation-naïve patients and 78 patients with previous SCS experience). Pain intensity scores for low back and leg pain, functional disability, medication use, and health-related quality of life utility scores were used in the analysis. Model-based clustering was performed on standardized data. Discriminant analysis was performed with linear and quadratic discriminant analysis, with leave-one-out cross-validation to evaluate model performance.ResultsModel-based clustering revealed two different clusters in the data. None of the clusters clearly separated SCS-naïve patients from patients with previous SCS experience. Linear discriminant analysis resulted in a leave-one-out cross-validation error rate of 30.0% to discriminate between both patient groups, based on routinely collected clinical parameters.ConclusionsClustering analysis did not result in clusters that separate SCS-naïve patients from patients with previous SCS experience. This may suggest that both patient groups should not be considered as two different patient groups when comparing them on routine clinical parameters, with potentially profound implications for research and clinical settings.Clinical Trial RegistrationThe Clinicaltrials.gov registration number for the Discover study is NCT02787265.Copyright © 2022 International Neuromodulation Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

13 keywords...

hide…