Prediction of 2-year work participation in sickness absentees with neck or shoulder pain: the contribution of demographic, patient-reported, clinical and imaging information

Background In cases of neck and shoulder pain, the responsibility for assessing work prognosis is held by clinicians with access to different domains of information. One of these domains is magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and although MRI is increasingly used, it is unknown which domains of information contribute the most to the prediction of work prognosis. This retrospective cohort study explored the contribution of demographic, patient-reported, clinical, and MRI information to the prediction of work participation in sickness absentees with neck or shoulder pain. Methods From a secondary care setting, 168 sickness absentees with neck or shoulder pain were included. Based on registry data, a successful work outcome was defined as ≥50% work participation score (WPS) from Weeks 1 to 104 after enrolment. Prognostic variables were categorized into four domains (demographic, patient-reported, clinical, and MRI) resembling the order of information obtained in a clinical setting. Crude logistic regression analyses were used to identify prognostic variables for each domain ( p < 0.2). This was followed by multivariable analyses including the identified variables in a domain-wise order. For each added domain, the probability of successful WPS was dichotomized leaving two possible classifications: ≥ 50% chance of successful WPS or not. In cross-tabulations of chance and the actual WPS outcome, positive and negative predictive values (PPV and NPV), sensitivity, specificity and area under the curve (AUC) were calculated. Results The combination of demographic and patient-reported variables yielded an NPV of 0.72 and a PPV of 0.67, while specificity was 0.82, sensitivity 0.54 and AUC 0.77. None of these values improved notably by adding clinical and MRI variables as predictors of successful WPS. Conclusions These results suggest that - among sickness absentees with neck or shoulder pain – clinical and MRI variables provide no additional information for the prediction of work participation compared with only demographic and patient-reported information.