The Emergence of Patient Reported Outcomes for the Chest Wall: A PRO Frontier for Orthothoracic Surgery

SUMMARY: Although multiple patient-reported outcomes (PROs) exist and are integrated into clinical practice for extremities in orthopaedics, the scope of orthopaedics is starting to include chest wall injury. Only recently has a general chest wall injury-specific PRO been developed, the Chest Wall Injury Quality of Life questionnaire (C-QoL). Previous legacy PROs used for patients with chest wall injuries vary between the PROMIS (Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System) Global Health (PROMIS 10), 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36), 12-Item Short-Form (SF-12), RAND 36-Item Health Survey, EuroQol (EQ-5D-5L), and McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ). These tools, intentionally general, do not capture the nuances of symptoms and have not been validated in populations with chest wall injuries. Future research would benefit from standardized and specific chest wall functional outcome tools, as the field is multidisciplinary and guidelines continue to be developed.