Scales for assessing neurological disorders and degenerative changes in the cervical spine. Literature review

Abstract

More than sixty scales have been developed for the diagnosis and treatment of degenerative pathology of the cervical spine from the perspective of neurological syndromes. The use of most of these in clinical practice is limited. The purpose of this study is to highlight the most popular scales for assessing degenerative changes of the cervical spine from the perspective of neurological syndromes in the diagnosis and determination of treatment tactics for single-segment stenosis of the spinal canal at the cervical level. The current clinical guidelines “Degenerative Spine Diseases” 2021 use the Neck Disability Index, the Visual Analog Scale, and the Frankel Grade among all scales. MEDLINE (PubMed) and Google Scholar were searched from 1972 to 2023 using the key words “cervical spine degeneration”. The initial search identified more than 13,000 articles. This review included 52 studies in which the analysis of clinical and neurological data was carried out using scoring scales for assessing neurological syndromes and functional status in degenerative spinal stenoses at the cervical level. The validity, reliability, and applicability of the scales in clinical practice were analyzed and compared. Based on the analysis of literature data, the most rational scales to use from the standpoint of validity, reliability, and time consumption are the Visual Analog Scale for pain assessment, the Neck Disability Index for assessing cervical radiculopathy, the European Myelopathy Score to assess cervical myelopathy, the Neck Pain and Disability Scale to assess functional outcomes, and the Hospital Anxiet y and Depression Scale for mental status assessment.