Occult tethered cord syndrome: a survey of practice patterns
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECT: Tethered cord syndrome (TCS) is associated with a number of congenital anomalies involving early development of the spinal cord. These include myelomeningocele, spinal cord lipoma, low-lying conus medullaris, and a fibrofatty terminal filum. Occult TCS occurs in patients when clinical features indicate a TCS but the typical anatomical abnormalities are lacking. It is controversial whether surgical release of the terminal filum leads to clinical improvement in a patient who does not have a previously identified anatomical abnormality. To assess the clinical standard used by practicing pediatric neurosurgeons, a practice survey was conducted at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Joint Section for Pediatric Neurological Surgery of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons/Congress of Neurological Surgeons. METHODS: The survey examined clinical decision making for a same-case scenario with differing appearance on imaging studies. There was a clear consensus regarding diagnosis and treatment in the patient with symptoms, a low-lying conus medullaris, and a fatty terminal filum. The vast majority of respondents (85%) favored surgical untethering for this patient. A majority of respondents (67%) also favored treatment for the patient having symptoms and a fatty terminal filum. There was, however, significant disagreement regarding the diagnosis and treatment of disease in one patient with symptoms and an inconclusive magnetic resonance imaging study. Some respondents clearly favored surgery, whereas others believed that this patient did not meet the diagnostic criteria for TCS. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this survey support the development of a randomized clinical trial to address the benefit of surgery for occult TCS.
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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 | 0.002 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".