• Mitsuru Fukui, Kazuhiro Chiba, Mamoru Kawakami, Shinichi Kikuchi, Shinichi Konno, Masabumi Miyamoto, Atsushi Seichi, Tadashi Shimamura, Osamu Shirado, Toshihiko Taguchi, Kazuhisa Takahashi, Katsushi Takeshita, Toshikazu Tani, Yoshiaki Toyama, Kazuo Yonenobu, Eiji Wada, Takashi Tanaka, and Yoshio Hirota.
• Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Tokyo, Japan.
• J Orthop Sci. 2007 Jul 1;12(4):321-6.

BackgroundThe manner of measuring the outcome of cervical myelopathy must be patient-oriented and have sufficient reliability and validity. The current Japanese Orthopaedic Association (JOA) scoring system for cervical myelopathy is widely used but has not met this requirement. The first- and second-round surveys established 24 items for inclusion on a new questionnaire for cervical myelopathy. The purpose of this study (the third-round survey A) was to confirm the reproducibility of patient responses to the selected questions.MethodsA total of 201 patients with cervical myelopathy and with no change of symptoms between the two interviews were included. Each patient was interviewed twice using the same questionnaire at an interval of 4 weeks. The reliability of the questionnaire was evaluated by determining the extension of the weighted kappa coefficients.ResultsThe weighted kappa coefficient for each item was >0.4, confirming that the test-retest reliability was acceptable.ConclusionsThe newly developed JOA Cervical Myelopathy Evaluation Questionnaire was proven to have sufficient reliability.

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