Factors Associated With Patient-Reported Postsurgical Symptom Improvement in Adult Females with Chiari Malformation Type I: A Report from the Chiari1000 Dataset.

OBJECTIVE

The goal of this study was to assess if a broad array of factors is predictive of patient-reported surgical impact on symptoms.

METHODS

Sixty-five presurgical factors were selected from the self-report history questionnaires (12 variables, N = 653), standardized scales (14 variables, N = 494-581), and morphometric measurements from magnetic resonance imaging (39 variables, N = 137) data of adult women in the Chiari1000 dataset. The factors were tested independently to identify those that were either significantly different in terms of, or significantly related to, patient-reported surgical impact on symptoms (P < 0.05). These results were then used to build a forward selection regression model.

RESULTS

Overall, 74.4% of the patients reported either some level of improvement or complete resolution of symptoms. Independent testing identified 12 significant factors, including having a family member diagnosed with Chiari malformation type I (CMI), Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, migraines, duration of symptoms >2 years, multiple surgeries, symptom severity, depression, anxiety, stress, and loneliness. Depression showed the highest correlation (r = 0.36; P < 0.00001) with a negative outcome. The regression model produced an R2 = 0.346 and identified 5 factors with significant unique variance.

CONCLUSIONS

The regression model accounted for more than a third of the surgical impact variance. Having a family member diagnosed with CMI contributed the largest unique variance to the model, suggesting that hereditary CMI may represent a unique subset of patients with poorer outcomes. Independent testing showed that psychological factors, such as depression and anxiety, were significant negative predictors, indicating that presurgical screening and treatment for these psychological conditions may improve outcomes.