Questionnaires

The American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons Standardized Assessment Form was developed during 1990 to 1993 by the ASES to address the need for a state-of-the-art assessment tool for all shoulder patients regardless of diagnosis. The American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons Standardized Shoulder Assessment Form consists of 3 sections: demographic information, patient self-evaluation (ASESq), and physician assessment.24 We focused on the ASESq, as a PROM, together with the ASES shoulder score index, which is calculated from the items of the ASESq.8, 12, 15, 21, 22, 34, 35 The ASESq contains 18 questions divided over 3 sections: pain, instability and activities of daily living (ADL). The ASES shoulder score index is derived from the visual analog scale (VAS) for pain and the cumulative ADL score. The ADL score consists of 10 questions that assess ADL for both shoulders, graded on a 4-point ordinal scale, from 0 (unable to do) to 3 (not difficult). The shoulder score index (X) has a range from 0 (most disability) to 100 (least disability) and can be calculated with the formula: X = [(10 − VAS pain score) × 5] + [(5/3) × cumulative ADL score].

The validation of the ASESq-NL is achieved by comparing its 3 domains “pain”, “stability” and “activity of daily living” with the corresponding 8 domains of the 36-Item SF-36 and the 2 domains of the Shoulder Pain and Disability Index (SPADI).10, 11, 25 The SF-36 is one of the most used generic patient-reported health measures, but is also specifically validated for shoulder complaints.6 The SPADI is a tested and widely used self-assessment instrument for the shoulder.7, 25 Both measures were adapted and validated for Dutch language and have both been used for the outcome validation of the original ASESq as well as for the crosscultural adaptation and validation of the ASESq into other languages.8, 12, 22, 24, 30, 34, 35