Outcome measures in rehabilitation medicine are tools used to evaluate the level of disability.[1] They can be beneficial for physicians to judge the path of a patient's recovery, for researchers to compare different management protocols and for politicians in order to find the cost-effectiveness of their decisions.[citation needed]
As an outcome measure specifically designed for spinal cord injury, the Spinal Cord Independence Measure is a tool that evaluates how safely, cheaply, and independently a patient can do basic activities of daily living.[2][3]
Structure
The measure consists of 19 items categorized in three subscales:self care, respiration and sphincter management, and mobility.
Psychometric property
Its last version, SCIM III has been validated in many multicenter trials[4][5][6] and translated into Italian,[7] Spanish,[8] Greek,[9] Portuguese,[10] Thai,[11] Turkish[12] and Persian[13] languages. It has been concluded that SCIM III has the most appropriate psychometric properties for measuring functional level of spinal cord injured individuals.[14][15]
^Itzkovich, M (2007). "The Spinal Cord Independence Measure (SCIM) version III:reliability and validity in a multi-center international study". Disability and Rehabilitation. 29 (24): 1926–1933. doi:10.1080/09638280601046302. PMID17852230. S2CID25972037.
^Zarco-perinan, MJ (2014). "Development of the Spanish version of the Spinal Cord Independence Measure version III: cross cultural adaptation and reliability and validity study". Disability and Rehabilitation. 36 (19): 1644–1651. doi:10.3109/09638288.2013.864713. PMID24320025. S2CID34885060.