Validity of the Leg-O-Meter, an Instrument to Measure Leg Circumference
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The objective of this study was to validate the Leg-O-Meter measure against the clinical assessment of edema made by physicians using data from a 1-year follow-up study of unselected patients with chronic venous disease of the leg (CVDL). The Leg-O-Meter consists of a tape measure fixed to a stand attached to a small board on which the patient is in standing position. Its reliability has been shown to be above 97%. Data from the Venous Insufficiency Epidemiologic and Economic Study (VEINES) were used: 1,521 patients from France, Belgium, Italy, and Quebec (Canada) who spontaneously consulted a physician between 1994 and 1995 with a complaint resulting from venous problems of the legs were included. Baseline variables included leg circumference measurements using the Leg-O-Meter; physicians were also asked to diagnose edema and report it as present or absent on each leg. Clinical edema and leg circumferences were assessed again 3 to 6 months after the baseline visit and 12 months after baseline. The tape measure of the Leg-O-Meter was fixed at 13 cm from the floor. The first and last assessments were used to evaluate the variation in edema during the follow-up period. Clinical variation in edema status was assessed as follows: improved, if edema was diagnosed at baseline but not at the final visit; unchanged, if edema was diagnosed at both visits; and worsened, if there was no diagnosis of edema at baseline but a diagnosis of edema was made at the final visit. Variation in measured edema was classified as improved if there was a decrease in leg circumference of more than 1 cm between baseline and final evaluation; unchanged, if the difference in leg circumference was between plus or minus 1 cm between the 2 assessments; and worsened, if there was an increase in leg circumference greater than 1 cm between the 2 assessments. Data-driven cut-off points were also used: 1.3 cm and 1.5 cm. Sensitivity and specificity of the Leg-O-Meter using physician diagnosis as "gold standard" were calculated. In addition, receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves were calculated by using the 3 different leg circumference cut-off points in order to determine the accuracy of the Leg-O-Meter to detect changes in edema. The overall accuracy of the Leg-O-Meter was 0.84 (standard error (se) = 0.06). Accuracy was greater when 1.5 cm was used as a cut-point. The Leg-O-Meter is an objective, reliable, and standardized instrument to assess patients over time. A change of 1.5 cm between 2 measurements gives a valid estimate of improvement or worsening of edema, when compared to physicians' diagnosis. The Leg-O-Meter is also sensitive to any changes in leg circumferences, which is an advantage over the clinical evaluation of edema.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.037 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".