Pathology Screening by Physical Therapists

Here are the clinical prediction rules I routinely use in the clinic.

They are included as a separate chapter in my new book Bulletproof Expert Systems: Clinical Decision Support for Physical Therapists in the Outpatient Setting available by AuthorHouse publishers.

Please let me know if you see any omissions. Do you use any rules that I have not included here?

A separate table of decision rules used to to predict treatment, called Treatment Based Classification, was published December 28th, 2012.

Rule	Author	Year	Level of Rule Development
Presence of Community Acquired Pneumonia	Heckerling et al	1990	Level 1 Impact Analysis
Ottawa Ankle and Foot Rules	Stiell et al	1992	Level 1 Impact Analysis
Well's Criteria for Deep Vein Thrombosis	Well's et al	1995	Level 1 Impact Analysis
Ottawa Knee Rule	Stiell et al	1996	Level 1 Impact Analysis
Canadian Cervical Spine Rule for Alert and Stable Trauma Patients	Stiell et al	2001	Level 1 Impact Analysis
Cancer Rule in Lower Back Pain Patients	Joines et al	2001	Cost Effectiveness study
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome	Wainner et al	2005	Derivation
Elbow Fracture in Trauma or Sports patients	Appelboam et al	2008	Level 2 Narrow Validation
Screening for Vertebral Fractures in Patients with Lower Back Pain	Henschke et al	2009	Derivation
Stroke in Dizzy Patients	Kattah et al	2011	Derivation

The "take away" I get from this table is that the low-hanging fruit has already been picked.

There doesn't seen to be an new impact study in screening for pathology using clinical decision rules in the last decade.

Do we know if clinical decision rules actually influence clinician behavior, improve patient outcomes or lower costs?

Let me know.