PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Mohit Bhandari
AU  - Scott M. Wasserman
AU  - Nicole Yurgin
AU  - Brad Petrisor
AU  - Sheila Sprague
AU  - Ricardo E. Dent
TI  - Development and preliminary validation of a Function IndeX for Trauma (FIX-IT)
AID  - 10.1503/cjs.004312
DP  - 2013 Oct 01
TA  - Canadian Journal of Surgery
PG  - E114--E120
VI  - 56
IP  - 5
4099  - http://canjsurg.ca/content/56/5/E114.short
4100  - http://canjsurg.ca/content/56/5/E114.full
SO  - CAN J SURG2013 Oct 01; 56
AB  - Background: Assessing fracture healing in clinical trials is subjective. The new Function IndeX for Trauma (FIX-IT) score provides a simple, standardized approach to assess weight-bearing and pain in patients with lower extremity fractures. We conducted an initial validation of the FIX-IT score.Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study involving 50 patients with lower extremity fractures across different stages of healing to evaluate the reliability and preliminary validity of the FIX-IT score. Patients were independently examined by 2 orthopedic surgeons, 1 orthopedic fellow, 2 orthopedic residents and 2 research coordinators. Patients also completed the Short Form-36 version 2 (SF-36v2) questionnaire, and convergent validity was tested with the SF-36v2.Results: For interrater reliability, the intraclass correlation coefficents ranged from 0.637 to 0.915. The overall interrater reliability for the total FIX-IT score was 0.879 (95% confidence interval 0.828–0.921). The correlations between the FIX-IT score and the SF-36 ranged from 0.682 to 0.770 for the physical component summary score, from 0.681 to 0.758 for the physical function subscale, and from 0.677 to 0.786 for the role–physical subscale.Conclusion: The FIX-IT score had high interrater agreement across multiple examiners. Moreover, FIX-IT scores correlate with the physical scores of the SF-36. Although additional research is needed to fully validate FIX-IT, our results suggest the potential for FIX-IT to be a reliable adjunctive clinician measure to evaluate healing in lower extremity fractures.Level of evidence Diagnostic Study Level I.