Explaining Personalized Activity Limitations in Patients With Hand and Wrist Disorders: Insights from Sociodemographic, Clinical, and Mindset Characteristics.

Objectives: To investigate the association of sociodemographic, clinical, and mindset characteristics on outcomes measured with a patient-specific patient-reported outcome measure (PROM); the Patient Specific Functional Scale (PSFS). Secondly, we examined whether these factors differ when a fixed-item PROM, the Michigan Hand Outcome Questionnaire (MHQ), is used as an outcome.

Design: Cohort study, using the aforementioned groups of factors in a hierarchical linear regression.

Setting: Twenty-six clinics for hand and wrist conditions in the Netherlands.

Participants: Two samples of patients with various hand and wrist conditions and treatments: n=7111 (PSFS) and n=5872 (MHQ).

Interventions: NA.

Main Outcome Measures: The PSFS and MHQ at 3 months.

Results: The PSFS exhibited greater between-subject variability in baseline, follow-up, and change scores than the MHQ. Better PSFS outcomes were associated with: no involvement in litigation (β[95% confidence interval=-0.40[-0.54;-0.25]), better treatment expectations (0.09[0.06;0.13]), light workload (0.08[0.03;0.14]), not smoking (-0.07[-0.13;-0.01]), men sex (0.07[0.02;0.12]), better quality of life (0.07[0.05;0.10]), moderate workload (0.06[0.00;0.13]), better hand satisfaction (0.05[0.02; 0.07]), less concern (-0.05[-0.08;-0.02]), less pain at rest (-0.04[-0.08;-0.00]), younger age (-0.04[-0.07;-0.01]), better comprehensibility (0.03[0.01;0.06]), better timeline perception (-0.03[-0.06;-0.01]), and better control (-0.02[-0.04;-0.00]). The MHQ model was highly similar but showed a higher R than the PSFS model (0.41 vs 0.15), largely due to the R of the baseline scores (0.23 for MHQ vs 0.01 for PSFS).

Conclusions: Health care professionals can improve personalized activity limitations by addressing treatment expectations and illness perceptions, which affect PSFS outcomes. Similar factors affect the MHQ, but the baseline MHQ score has a stronger association with the outcome score than the PSFS. While the PSFS is better for individual patient evaluation, we found that it is difficult to explain PSFS outcomes based on baseline characteristics compared with the MHQ. Using both patient-specific and fixed-item instruments helps health care professionals develop personalized treatment plans that meet individual needs and goals.