A binary outcome is the standard practice in most clinical research and as such, regression models like the binary logistic and the Cox proportional hazards are among the most used in the literature. This is not the case in stroke literature, where ordinal outcomes are now the standard practice in clinical trials and observational studies and registries. The idea behind it is that with more levels in your outcome it is possible to pick up more subtle yet still meaningful effects.
Based on this idea, I helped to propose and develop an ordinal scale for “post venous thrombosis” research. I described this effort shortly in a previous blog post “Three new papers – part III”. That post also describes the “post COVID-19 functional status” scale, or the PCFS. The name is quite self-explanatory I think, so I won’t dive into too much detail on the scale itself. I do want to describe what happened next: our proposal was published, and we got quite some traction. Over 70 colleagues contacted us saying that they are interested in using the PCFS. They delivered.
The PCFS is now available in 14 languages, is included in at least 4 national guidelines, is part of 1 published paper and 1 pre-print. For an up to date overview, you can take a look at the PCFS-section on this page, or even better, the dedicated OSF website.
bob siegerink 