After at least six years of research, Unicamp orthopedist and sports physician Sérgio Piedade has completed the development of software aimed exclusively at analyzing the results of treating injuries in athletes and regular sports practitioners.
Called 4-Domain Sports Prom – an acronym for Patient Reported Outcome Measures – the software offers a comprehensive assessment, allowing doctors and healthcare professionals to access the outcome of treatments from the perspective of the athlete or sportsperson who suffered the injury.
According to Piedade, the program is the first questionnaire designed to assess this population in terms of their physical and psychological specificities.
“Previously, the assessments we made regarding treatment were based on data collected from questionnaires that did not consider the specificities and physical demands of this group. The system was developed for this specific population,” he said.
The questionnaire has four domains, responsible for assessing the athlete's condition before the injury, assessing their condition after the injury, collecting information about the athlete's expectations regarding treatment and obtaining their assessment of the treatment received and the surgical results. Each domain has two questions with answers ranging from zero to ten.
The questionnaire records information reported by the athlete about their activity level and main physical demands before the injury, thus establishing their clinical condition as a reference.
There are questions about, for example, how motivating (positive stress involved) the sporting activity is, what the main physical demands of the activity are and what type of injury you suffered – body part, exact location of the injury and how much this injury influenced your quality of life. There are also questions about the frequency of sports practice and how much the sporting activity influences your quality of life.
Piedade emphasizes that the questionnaire does not offer a final score as it was designed to promote an in-depth evaluation of the data collected from descriptive and inferential statistical analysis.
The software, says Piedade, allows the collection of additional information about the patient, such as weight, height, age, sport, type of injury and treatment – information that may or may not be used by the researcher depending on his focus of interest, allowing him to make a cut with the population of athletes he intends to analyze.
The application collects the information provided by the patient, sends it to a database – which may be in a cloud or on the computer itself – and performs a descriptive analysis. From 50 patients evaluated, the program issues an inferential analysis.
Piedade says that the software allows healthcare professionals to filter data before exploring statistical analysis. In addition, it can be used for specific problems, such as shoulder, knee, ankle injuries, etc. At the same time, the application offers the option to export or print a data spreadsheet.
According to the professor, the questionnaire allows health professionals and patients to work on specific issues, such as the physical demands related to a particular sport or the athlete's performance in that sport. A goalkeeper, for example, is more prone to injuries to the hands, shoulders and elbows. A forward, on the other hand, may have more serious problems with his knees.
“Sports can have specific physical demands, hence the importance of classification issues,” he said. “Injuries are not uniform.”
Originally developed in English, the software has been translated into Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Chinese. According to the professor, a French version will also be available in the coming months.
The professor said that, for the development of the program, he had the collaboration of Cleide Moreira Silva (statistician), Anderson Barreto Furlan (software programmer), Marcelo Nishihata Fernandes (web designer), and Mariana Percario Piedade ( screenwriter and animator ).
