Usefulness of the clinical activity score of 10 items for thyroid ophthalmopathy: a scoping review protocol

Objective: The objective of this scoping review is to describe the uses of the 10-item clinical activity score (CAS10), as well as the cut-off points used.

Introduction: The CAS instrument was created by Mourits for thyroid ophthalmopathy, is still recommended in the most recent clinical practice guidelines. The CAS10 has been widely used for assessing the activity of Graves' ophthalmopathy and the CAS7 for measure response to treatment. Both Mourits documents are cited interchangeably and often erroneously to refer to CAS7. The development of a scoping review on this topic is fundamental to clarify the gaps in knowledge that are recognized when citing the scale, considering that no current or underway scoping reviews on the topic were identified.

Inclusion criteria: All the investigations where patients were evaluated using the CAS10 will be included. The articles where the number of CAS items was not specified or if the number of items was different from 10, they were eliminated. Studies from all continents were included equally.

Methods: The electronic search will be carried out in electronic databases like PubMed and Scopus until September 25, 2021, restricting itself to the English and Spanish languages. Primary studies that had used the CAS10 from Mourits will be searched using the “citing by” tool between 1989- and 1997-year publication. The data will be extracted in a Microsoft Excel sheet independently by two researchers to later be compared and avoid typing bias. The selected data will be presented in diagrammatic and tabular forms.