Validation of the Medical Research Council Scale Questionnaire (MRCS-Q) for the assessment of post-traumatic...

Clinical neurosensory testing (NST) is reliable for grading trigeminal nerve injuries but is not well suited to large-scale or remote follow-up. The 12-item patient-reported Medical Research Council Sensory Questionnaire (MRCS-Q), which mirrors the clinical Medical Research Council scale in plain language suitable for electronic administration, was therefore developed and prospectively validated. Ten patients with post‑traumatic trigeminal neuropathy and ten healthy volunteers completed the questionnaire and the Douleur Neuropathique 4 (DN4), while a blinded examiner scored subjects using NST; questionnaires were repeated after 2 weeks. Psychometric performance was assessed with Cronbach's α, intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs), Spearman correlation coefficients, and receiver operating characteristic analysis. Questionnaire totals correlated strongly with clinical scale grades (0.83; P < 0.001) and with questionnaire‑derived grade (0.96; P < 0.001). Internal consistency was good (α = 0.72) and test-retest reliability excellent (ICC = 0.96). Higher questionnaire scores were associated with lower DN4 scores (-0.72; P < 0.001) and with less self‑reported numbness (-0.88; P < 0.001). Diagnostic accuracy for neuropathy was very good with an area under the curve of 0.90; a threshold of ≤5 yielded 0.90 sensitivity and 1.00 specificity, whereas DN4 showed perfect specificity but only 0.30 sensitivity. The patient‑reported questionnaire offers a rapid, reliable and valid measure of trigeminal neurosensory function that could support electronic screening, and remote outcome assessment, pending multicenter confirmation.