The Oxford Elbow Score - Isis Project No 3737

A Health Outcomes Questionnaire is available from Isis tackling the assessment of outcomes following elbow surgery. 

The Oxford Elbow Score (OES) is a 12-item patient-reported questionnaire specifically designed and developed for assessing outcomes of elbow surgery. To date, no other measure of outcomes following elbow surgery exist that are patient-generated (by interviews), reliable, valid, responsive and developed and tested in a surgical context.

The OES is a Patient Reported Outcomes Measure (PROMs) and is therefore independent of the clinical team or surgeon who delivered the intervention. The development of the OES was driven by demands for a suitable PROM by orthopaedic surgeons who wished to measure the outcomes of their treatments from the patient’s perspective. The questionnaire was designed and developed by researchers (within the Health Services Research unit, Division of Public Health and Primary Health Care, University of Oxford) who also created the Oxford Hip and Knee scores, which have been used for assessment of all NHS hip and knee surgery interventions (approximately 120,000) since April 2009. Designed and developed in association with surgical colleagues at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, the OESS has been tested in a surgical context with patients and shown to be reliable, valid and responsive.

Properties of the Oxford Elbow Score (OES):

• A condition-specific questionnaire designed and developed for use in assessing surgery intervention of the elbow.
• Can be used as an indicator for recovery and general improvement in quality of life following surgery.
• Shown to be valid, reliable and sensitive to change after rigorous testing.
• Brief and easy to complete resulting in good return rates.
• Can be completed anywhere and delivered by post, making follow-up of large numbers of patients much more feasible (and cheaper) than conducting clinical assessments.
• Easy to interpret scores.
• Three subscales / domains capture patient views on their elbow function, pain and social-psychological condition.

Using the Questionnaire

The Elbow Score developed at Oxford is available for licence from Isis Innovation. Please contact the Isis Project Manager or email healthoutcomes@isis.ox.ac.uk. Alternatively, parties wishing to use the questionnaire can complete a licence request form here.

Request Further Information: Project Number 3737 - The Oxford Elbow Score