September 5, 2017
The streamlined version of the Expanded Disability Status Scale (sEDSS) for multiple sclerosis (MS) had strong agreement and correlation with the existing EDSS and can provide a useful measure of disability in clinical practice, a recent study found. The EDSS was modified by eliminating maneuvers with no impact on function, consolidating redundancies, and simplifying scoring. This sEDSS was refined and preliminarily validated using a pilot cohort of 102 patients. Subsequently, the sEDSS was retrospectively validated using 968 patients from the CombiRx trial. Researchers evaluated correlation and agreement between each functional system as well as the overall sEDSS and EDSS. They concluded:
The sEDSS correlated strongly with the EDSS, both overall (Spearman’s rho = 0.93) and for each functional system (Spearman’s rho 0.65–0.97).
Correlation was slightly lower for functional systems where scoring was modified for consolidation and simplification.
