OBJECTIVE: Our goal is to present a conceptual framework which is relied upon to better understand the processes through which surgeons make therapeutic decisions around how to treat thoracolumbar burst fractures (TL) fractures.
METHODS: We will describe the methodology used in the AO Spine TL A3/4 Study prospective observational study and how the radiographs collected for this study were utilized to study the relationships between various variables that factor into surgeon decision making.
RESULTS: With 22 expert spine trauma surgeons analyzing the acute CT scans of 183 patients with TL fractures we were able to perform pairwise analyses, look at reliability and correlations between responses and develop frequency tables, and regression models to assess the relationships and interactions between variables. We also used machine learning to develop decision trees.
CONCLUSIONS: This paper outlines the overall methodological elements that are common to the subsequent papers in this focus issue.
目的:我们的目标是提出一个概念框架,以更好地理解外科医生如何治疗胸腰椎爆裂骨折(TL)骨折做出治疗决策的过程。
方法:我们将描述AO脊柱TLA3/4研究前瞻性观察研究中使用的方法,以及如何利用本研究收集的X射线照片来研究影响外科医生决策的各种变量之间的关系。
结果:通过22位脊柱创伤外科专家分析183例TL骨折患者的急性CT扫描,我们能够进行成对分析,查看响应之间的可靠性和相关性,并开发频率表,和回归模型来评估变量之间的关系和相互作用。我们还使用机器学习来开发决策树。
结论:本文概述了本焦点问题后续论文共有的总体方法学要素。