Measurement of Upper Extremity-Specific Comfort and Capability.

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) quantify symptom intensity and magnitude of capability. Upper extremity PROMs were developed shortly after the advent of general health PROMs. PROMs are still primarily research tools, and their use with individual patients is still evolving. When PROMs were developed, the initial and intuitive expectation was a strong correlation of comfort and capability with pathophysiology severity. In other words, people with greater radiographic arthritis or larger degenerative tendon defects were expected to feel worse and do less. After more than 20 years of research using PROMs, it is clear that mindset and circumstances account for more of the variation in PROMs than pathophysiology severity. Mounting research establishes upper extremity PROMs and PROMs in general as useful tools for anchoring and developing comprehensive, biopsychosocial approaches to care.