Article

PURPOSE: To calculate the clinical significance of the SCIM III according to
distribution-based approaches. METHOD: Retrospective review of the charts of 255
patients with registration of the total SCIM and of the four subscales. Clinical
significance was calculated per several distribution-based approaches. The
calculated clinical significance was compared with improvements by the patients
to determine the percentage of patients who achieved significant improvement.
RESULTS: An improvement of at least 4 points of the total SCIM is needed to
obtain a small significant improvement and of 10 points to obtain a substantial
improvement. Based on these results, the percentages of patients who achieved an
improvement varied from 60% to 100%. CONCLUSIONS: The results provide benchmarks
for clinicians and researchers to interpret whether patients' change score on the
SCIM III can be interpreted as true or clinically meaningful and to make clinical
judgments about the patients' progress. IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION: An
improvement of at least four points of the total SCIM is needed to obtain a small
significant improvement and of 10 points to obtain a substantial improvement. The
results provide benchmarks for clinicians and researchers to interpret whether
patients' change score on the SCIM III can be interpreted as true or clinically
meaningful and to make clinical judgments about the patients' progress.

Langue : ANGLAIS