Outcome measurements in hand and upper limb surgery

Of marginal importance only 20 years ago, outcome measurement has become one of the most widely published topics in medical literature. The concept of global health is described by the International Classification of Function, Disability and Health. Today, the surgeon's perspective is no longer sufficient to evaluate global health condition of a patient. The patient cannot be reduced to an organ. Outcome measurement must take into consideration body structures and function (symptoms, organ function) as reviewed by a professional, the individual's functional health status in terms of activity and evaluated by the patient himself, and his participation in his social environment. These principles are now being applied to our specialty and it is essential to know them to be able to collect, analyze and publish valid results. This review article defines the rules for using clinical outcome tools, provides the most widely used clinical and self-evaluation forms for our specialty as well as instructions for their use. Global outcome is usually obtained by arithmetic addition of scores; which is a simple but questionable method. The sieving and radar charts can be used for a more comprehensible representation showing areas of relative strength and relative weakness on a graph, as well as depicting general overall performance. The reliability of data is also affected by declaration of conflicts of interest, negligence or fraud. The level of evidence is questionable as long as a data verification system is not implemented.