The Development and Evaluation of a Disease-Specific Quality of Life Measurement Tool for Shoulder Instability

We have developed a measure of subjective health status (quality of life) for patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Ninety-seven patients with IBD described problems they had experienced as a result of the disease; the 32 most frequent and important items were included in the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire (IBDQ). Sixty-one IBD patients were evaluated twice. One month separated the evaluations, at which disease activity indices, the IBDQ, and a number of other questionnaires were administered. Reproducibility studies in 19 stable patients showed improvement in scores, but also a small within-person standard deviation. Responsiveness studies revealed large changes in scores in patients who had improved or deteriorated and suggested that the IBDQ was more responsive than a general health status measure. Responsiveness appeared greater in patients with ulcerative colitis than in those with Crohn's disease. Predicted and observed correlations between changes in IBDQ score and changes in other measures were similar. We conclude that although further testing is required, particularly in examining the relation between changes in the IBDQ and changes in the activity of Crohn's disease, the IBDQ shows promise as a measure of health status for clinical trials in IBD.

The American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons have adopted a standardized form for assessment of the shoulder. The form has a patient self-evaluation section and a physician assessment section. The patient self-evaluation section of the form contains visual analog scales for pain and instability and an activities of daily living questionnaire. The activities of daily living questionnaire is marked on a four-point ordinal scale that can be converted to a cumulative activities of daily living index. The patient can complete the self-evaluation portion of the questionnaire in the absence of a physician. The physician assessment section includes an area to collect demographic information and assesses range of motion, specific physical signs, strength, and stability. A shoulder score can be derived from the visual analogue scale score for pain (50%) and the cumulative activities of daily living score (50%). It is hoped that adoption of this instrument to measure shoulder function will facilitate communication between investigators, stimulate multicenter studies, and encourage validity testing of this and other available instruments to measure shoulder function and outcome. Copyright © 1994 Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery Board of Trustees. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.