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A clinically meaningful difference was generated for a performance measure of recovery from hip fracture
W G Hawkes1, G R Williams, S Zimmerman
1Division of Gerontology, Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA. whawkes@epi.umaryland.edu
Background And Objective:
The Lower Extremity Gain Scale (LEGS) is a performance measure of tasks that are often impaired in hip fracture patients. This study was designed to determine a clinically meaningful difference in LEGS.
Methods:
The population was 139 female patients (age >65 years) admitted to Baltimore hospitals. Recovery levels were estimated by fitting trajectory curves for the cohort for the 12 months post fracture. The clinically meaningful difference was evaluated using an anchor-based approach, examining the relationship between the LEGS recovery level and age. A second, distribution-based method used an effect size of .20.
Results:
According to our model, a difference of 5 years in age corresponded to a difference of 1.6-3.6 points in LEGS scores. The standard deviation for LEGS at 12 months was 8.0; thus, Cohen's effect size of 0.2 would equate to a difference of 1.6 points.
Conclusion:
This suggests that a clinically meaningful difference in the LEGS scores for a population in this age range would be 2-3 points.