A new technology, Functional Electrical Stimulation, was compared with conventional surgery for patients with sixth vertebra level Motor Group 2 tetraplegia. Marjan Hummel and colleagues at University of Twente, Enschede, the Netherlands used the Analytic Hierarchy Process (via Team Expert Choice) with a multidisciplinary rehabilitation team to evaluate these options and also compared the team's attribute weights with those elicited from 34 potential recipients. 5 high level attributes (with number of sub-attributes in brackets)
Ease of Use (4)
Social Acceptance (4)
Arm-hand Function (4)
Risks (4)
Load of Treatment (3) Surgery
Surgery plus Functional Electrical Stimulation Provided by the rehab team at the 19 sub-attribute level through the 9 point strength of preference method. In this Annalisa these have been transformed into those for the 5 high level ones by appropriate weighting Provided by the rehab team at the 19 sub-attribute level through the 9 point strength of preference method. Separate sets of weightings elicited from 34 potential recipients in centres across the Netherlands at the 5 attribute level. Slide 1 presents the results using the rehab team weights, Slide 2 the result using the potential recipients weights. The weights are significantly different though the average weightings of the potential recipient produce the same optimal choice (surgery) JM Marjan Hummel, Govert J Snoek, Janine A van Til, Wouter van Rossum, Maarten J IJzerman (2005) " A multicriteria decision analysis of augmentative treatment of upper limbs in persons with tetraplegia" Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development 42 (5) Sept/Oct Annalisa provides the means for individual teams/patients to simply confirm or vary the default/baseline weightings, and also to contribute to variation of the default/baseline/average  Ratings as and when appropriate.
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