Assessment of nurse practitioners’ capacity of using the ABC/2 formula for intracranial lesion volume measurement

Abstract

This study investigates the precision of nurse practitioners (NPs) in measuring intracranial lesion volumes using the ABC/2 method, a simple yet widely used technique in neurosurgical practices. Amidst physician workforce shortages, the role of NPs in clinical practice, including specialized tasks like lesion volume estimation, is gaining importance. We conducted a retrospective study involving patients treated for intracranial meningiomas. NPs estimated tumor volumes using the ABC/2 method, which was then compared with automated ABC/2 estimations considered as the gold standard. Statistical analyses, including paired sample t-tests, Bland-Altman analysis, and Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) analysis, were employed to assess measurement accuracy and consistency. Among the 265 meningioma patients included, NPs measured the average tumor volume as 36.95 ml, generally underestimating it compared to the 39.57 ml average obtained by the automated ABC/2 method. This underestimation, however, was clinically modest, indicated by an average percentage difference of 6.59% and a Cohen’s d value of 0.08. Consistency in measurements, assessed using Bland-Altman and ICC analyses, demonstrated a high level of agreement between NPs measurements and the automated method. Additionally, no significant differences in measurement accuracy were observed either among different NPs or across NPs with varying levels of work experience. Nurse practitioners can effectively employ the ABC/2 method for estimating intracranial lesion volumes with reasonable accuracy and consistency, irrespective of their work experience. This finding is pivotal in enhancing the role of NPs in neurosurgical practices and could be significant in alleviating the strain caused by the global shortage of physicians. Future research may explore extending NPs’ roles in other clinical diagnostic and therapeutic tasks.