HEAD-US Inter-rater repeatability
Research type
Research Study
Full title
HaemOphilia Arthropathy: Inter-rater Repeatability of an UltraSound Imaging Score (HORUS)
IRAS ID
185704
Contact name
David Stephensen
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
East Kent Univeristy Hospitals NHS Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 10 months, 29 days
Research summary
Haemophilia is a disorder in which the blood does not clot normally leading to bleeding into muscles and joints. As a result, the muscles and joints become painful and difficult to move, limiting physical activities. Detecting the earliest signs of damage to joints is challenging. Current methods include magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), X-ray and clinical examinations. MRI is costly, time consuming and difficult to do in children, meanwhile X-ray and current clinical examinations focus on end-stage symptoms. There is a need for a multi-joint examination that is time and cost efficient and effective at identifying important clinical differences to decrease the risk of people with haemophilia developing chronic disability later in life. Ultrasound (US) imaging has been proposed as a way of detecting early signs of joint damage and can be can be used at the patients’ routine outpatient clinic appointment. In order that clinicians can be confident in the results of US imaging our study will assess whether differences in US images obtained by physiotherapists working in a hospital clinic are due to changes in joint status and not due to variability in imaging and interpretation of scoring. We will also look at how well the US imaging agrees with the recommended clinical examination in detecting signs of joint damage.
REC name
West Midlands - Black Country Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/WM/0280
Date of REC Opinion
21 Aug 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion