Patient Candidacy Grading

Patient Candidacy Grading

The physician should use very effort to prospectively grade each A-ASC therapy candidate into Good, Fair, or Poor candidate categories. While scientific data on candidacy grading may or may not be available, oftentimes pragmatic grading systems can be used until such data becomes available.

This grading should therefore take into account:

Objective indications of disease severity: For example, a patient who has more severe disease may be less likely to respond than a patient with mild disease.
Co-morbid conditions: For example, a cardiac treatment may be less effective in a patient with signicant co-morbity such as COPD, type I diabetes mellitus, and PVD.
Patient history: For example, a patient with a history of severe osteoporosis may be less likely to respond to a fracture healing application.
Prior physician experience with response rates: For example, the physician may have experience that a cosmetic application is less likely to be effective in patients over 80 years of age.
Contraindications: For example, the patient may have a history of active malignancy.
Factors that may reduce outcome: For example, the patient may be taking medications that negatively impact A-ASC yields.