We Choose to Call it 'Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy': Findings of AO Spine RECODE-DCM, an International and Multi-Stakeholder Partnership to Agree a Standard Unifying Term and Definition for a Disease.

"the project was overseen by an international steering committee ( supplementary data 1 ) but day-to-day by a management group.; a list of candidate terms was taken from the literature using a scoping review of 2 clinical trial registers (clinicaltrials gov and eu trials) and medline ( supplementary data 2 ).; degenerative cervical myelopathy o umbrella term (subclassification possible eg csm and opll) o many syllables 'degenerative' - potential negative implications o specific / unique o describes the condition o could be abbreviated o increasingly adopted (eg ao spine recode-dcm) these findings were used to form a series of infographics ( supplementary data 3 ) incorporated into a survey (surveymonkey california usa) and distributed to the ao spine recode-dcm community (see below).; of the 417 registered email addresses248 individuals responded (58% participation) including 54 (22%) pwcm 149 (60%) surgeons and 45 (18%) ohcp with worldwide representation ( supplementary data 4 ).; csm dcm and cervical myelopathy were the 3 most popular terms across key stakeholder groups ( supplementary data 5 ).; thematic analysis of free text comments left by 41 respondents (19 [46%] surgeons13 [32%] pwcm or their supporters and 9 [22%] ohcp) identified 4 prevailing themes categorised as "momentum" (for dcm) (3 [7%]) "against degenerative" (3 [7%]) in favour of "simple language" (4 [10%]) and in favour of a "specific term" (7 [17%]) ( figure 2 supplementary data 6 ).; a working framework of 4 themes was identified across general medical definitions ( supplementary data 7 ) defined as the descriptor primary secondary and tertiary domains ( table 2 ).; the process was iterative with informal discussion used to resolve inconsistencies and develop a framework that was able to categorise content across descriptions that is shown in supplementary data 8 .; using this and informed by the dcm content that had populated each theme a draft definition was prepared ( supplementary data 9 )."

"The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article."

"Funding: The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article."