Dominic Pelle, MD: The Importance of Patient-Reported Outcomes

“We need to know how we’re doing. A set of X-rays after surgery doesn’t tell me if I’ve done a successful surgery. I need to know, is the patient back at work? Is their quality of life better?”

Clinicians know the importance of patient-reported outcomes all too well, and while there may be some debate around their reliability and clarity in clinical trials, in real-world practice, they can be an extraordinarily valuable tool for medical professionals.

Dominic Pelle, MD, spine surgeon, Center for Spine Health, Cleveland Clinic, knows this all too well. For him and his colleagues, these reports are what let him know if a procedure or an intervention is truly successful. Additionally, to help improve their outcomes, there has been a push to focus on taking a perioperative, multidisciplinary approach to pain management for these procedures.

Pelle spoke with NeurologyLive about this goal that the Center for Spine Health has set for itself and how using patient-reported outcomes and questionnaires can help the clinicians improve their experiences prior to, and after, surgery and other procedures.