Minimal Important Difference (MID) of two commonly used outcome measures for foot problems
journal contribution
posted on 2021-05-28, 01:56 authored by Karl LandorfKarl Landorf, JA Radford, S HudsonBackground: The Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) and the Foot Health Status Questionnaire (FHSQ) are two commonly used outcome measures for evaluating foot health. This study aimed to calculate the Minimal Important Difference (MID) of the VAS and the FHSQ.Methods: 184 participants with plantar heel pain were recruited from the general public to take part in two randomised trials (92 participants in each trial) that studied the effectiveness of two conservative interventions for plantar heel pain. Data from these participants were used to calculate the MIDs of the VAS and the FHSQ. An anchor-based method was used to calculate the MIDs. Two distinct types of pain were investigated for the VAS: average pain and first-step pain. All four domains of the FHSQ were investigated: foot pain, foot function, footwear and general foot health.Results: The MID for the VAS using the anchor-based approach was -8 mm (95% CI: -12 to -4) for average pain and -19 mm (95% CI: -25 to -13) for first-step pain on the 100 mm VAS. The MID for the FHSQ was 13 points (95% CI: 6 to 19) for pain and 7 points (95% CI: 1 to 13) for function. The MID for the footwear domain of the FHSQ was -2 points (95% CI: -8 to 4) and 0 points (95% CI: -7 to 6) for the general foot health domain of the FHSQ.Conclusion: The results of this study provide additional evidence for MID values of the VAS and the FHSQ for plantar heel pain. This is important for clinicians and researchers as it provides a greater understanding of how much improvement is required by a patient before a minimal, worthwhile change is experienced. The calculated MIDs will also assist researchers with prospective sample size calculations. © 2010 Landorf et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
History
Publication Date
2010-05-14Journal
Journal of Foot and Ankle ResearchVolume
3Issue
1Article Number
ARTN 7Pagination
6p.Publisher
BIOMED CENTRAL LTDISSN
1757-1146Rights Statement
The Author reserves all moral rights over the deposited text and must be credited if any re-use occurs. Documents deposited in OPAL are the Open Access versions of outputs published elsewhere. Changes resulting from the publishing process may therefore not be reflected in this document. The final published version may be obtained via the publisher’s DOI. Please note that additional copyright and access restrictions may apply to the published version.Publisher DOI
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