The Reliability of an Arabic Version of the Modified Japanese Orthopaedic Association Score for Cervical Myelopathy

Abstract

Introduction: The modified Japanese Orthopaedic Association (mJOA) score is considered to be among the most comprehensive scores in the assessment of patients with cervical myelopathy. Hence, providing reliable, translated, and cross-culturally adapted versions in different languages is required to standardize the evaluation of patients. This study aimed to translate a reliable Arabic version of the mJOA score.

Methods: A total of 65 patients of variable age and with etiologies for compressive cervical myelopathy were recruited. Both forward and backward translations were performed. Then, intraobserver and interobserver reliabilities were measured using the intraclass correlation coefficient and Cronbach's alpha coefficient.

Results: The mean age of the patients was 58.08 years, and most of them were male (69.2%). The intraobserver and interobserver reliabilities were almost in perfect agreement for the different sections and the total score, which were 96.8% and 97.4%, respectively.

Conclusion: In this study, a reliable, cross-culturally adapted Arabic version of the mJOA score for patients with cervical myelopathy is provided. Although the study was conducted on Egyptian patients, we believe that it could be implemented in majority of the Arabic-speaking population.