Welcome to the Survey

We need Round 2: Thank you to all those who participated in Round 1! You have given us a fantastic overview of all the ways in which DCM affects you. Some of you in fact suggested things we hadn't already thought of, and therefore we need to re-present those symptoms to a wider group of patients.

This survey is shorter than the last and will take less than 5 minutes.

A reminder of the background: 
Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy (DCM) is an umbrella term that describes a number of conditions in which the cervical spinal cord is injured due to degeneration of surrounding structures. Causes include conditions such as Cervical Spondylotic Myelopathy (CSM), Ossification of the Ligamentum Flavum (OLF), Ossification of the Posterior Longitudinal Ligament (OPLL) and Degenerative Disc Disease (DDD).

Awareness of Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy amongst the general public and health care providers is poor. Most patients are waiting at least 2 years for a diagnosis! This is not acceptable.
Myelopathy.org is working with the University of Cambridge to improve this. One of the challenges is that how DCM affects an individual is not well described, especially at the very early stages. This makes it difficult to advise on what to look out for.   

 At the Myelopathy.org CSM Patient and Public Involvement Day on the 21st of September, 2016, patients and their supporters described how DCM affected them. They also suggested some categories to group these symptoms.

The results of these discussions were considered by a larger group in the round 1 survey, to ensure they were representative and that nothing was missed. The new suggestions put forward, will be presented in this subsequent survey. We call this process a DELPHI Consensus Study.

 We would therefore like to invite patients with Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy to participate in this survey as a step towards better understanding of the symptoms experienced as a result of DCM.

 This information will help researchers know what to measure in treatment studies but also help to educate professionals on the early symptoms, to support early diagnosis.

 All information will be stored anonymously.

 Thank you for agreeing to participate

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