Oxford Shoulder Scores

The Oxford Shoulder Questionnaire relies on the patient’s subjective assessment of pain and ADL impairment to provide the assessment.

The Oxford Shoulder Questionnaire has been shown to correlate well with both the Constant Score and the SF36 assessment and to be sensitive to surgical intervention.

The Oxford Shoulder Questionnaire accumulates to a total score with a maximum value of 60, in which four pain related questions make up 33% of this total whilst the remaining 67% is derived from eight ADL related questions.

Previously the highest scores are attributed to the worst outcomes in the Oxford Shoulder Questionnaire, so that an adjustment is necessary to compare the results with the more conventional worse-is-lower methods. However, in approximately 2009 this was inverted so that a higher score now correlates with a better outcome. Therefore, the reader needs to be aware of this when reading medical research studies that have used the Oxford Scoring system.