Assessment Scores for Patients with Central Neurological Conditions in Rehabilitation: A Systematic Review.

Abstract

In rehabilitation, evidence-based practice relies on evaluating patients' standardized outcomes to manage care plans and resources; however, the selection of tools to use is globally inconsistent. Alternatively, emerging technologies can measure high-resolution biomarkers, but their implementation remains a challenge. Given the amount of measures, interest in new scoring systems of patient health synthesizing multisource data is rising. Emerging research in rehabilitation lacks standardized guidelines and psychometric validation of these scores. Hence, this review systematically examines the methods used for developing and validating patient assessment scores in rehabilitation. A systematic search included studies on the development and validation of scores to assess adult patients with central neurological disorders in rehabilitation. Nineteen studies were synthesized. In the score development, simpler methods and input data were more common (11 studies used statistics, 12 clinical data). In the validation, the heterogeneity in reference standards and tests in scores' psychometric analysis highlights the need for evidence and standardized processes in this field. Clinically relevant information is crucial for implementable scores able to guide clinical decision-making and care strategies. Future studies should adopt exploratory approaches, analyzing various input data, methods, and psychometric properties' impact on the score capability to assess patient health.