EVALUATION OF THE CONSTANT-MURLEY SHOULDER ASSESSMENT

We have analysed the Constant-Murley (1987) assessment for 25 patients with shoulder pathology. We found the score easy to use, intraobserve r errors, but sufficiently repeated measurements to give concern in it s use for clinical follow-up of patients. We have calculated 95% confi dence limits for a single assessment to be within 16 to 20 points in m ost cases. In addition, we found that all our subjects with instabilit y as their main problem scored within five points of the maximum; this suggests that the scoring method may need to be revised for use on th ese patients.