Shoulder pain and disability index: its effectiveness and reliability in an outpatient setting in Indian population

Background: One of the most common joints to be treated in the clinic is the shoulder joint. An orthopedic surgeon and physical therapists should be knowledgeable about the proper assessment of the shoulder joint to effectively evaluate and design a treatment program in shoulder pathologies. Shoulder pain and disability index (SPADI) is a questionnaire designed to measure pain and disability associated with shoulder pathologies in a clinical setting. SPADI’s effectiveness as a tool needed to be validated in Indian population hence this study. The objectives of this study were to measure effectiveness of SPADI in our setting and to measure the reliability and acceptability of SPADI in Indian population.Methods: 60 patients with shoulder pain between the age of 25-50 years who attended the orthopaedic OPD during the time period of April 2017 to April 2018 were included. The subjects were evaluated with SPADI and oxford shoulder score (OSS) questionnaires. The data was analyzed by paired sample T test and alpha coefficient level.Results: The data statistically analysed revealed that the scales are reliable as the Cronbach's alpha was high (>0.7) and was effective to measure the pain and disability of the shoulder joint in our clinical set up.Conclusions: It can be concluded from our statistical analysis that both SPADI and OSS are equally effective tools in measuring pain and disability in our clinical set up, the only difference being that SPADI is operationally very simple and lucid for our population