Shoulder & Elbow Sports Medicine Hand & Upper Extremity
BACKGROUND: To provide a systematic review on the current literature specific to the adoption of Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) and trends in patient reported outcome measure (PROM) use in shoulder orthopedic literature.
METHODS: A review of all English language articles in PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase was conducted in January of 2026. All articles between 2015 and 2025 reporting on patient outcomes in shoulder specific orthopedic literature had their study characteristics extracted, including publication year, country of origin, level of evidence, journal of publication, shoulder topic, and which PROMs were reported on. Review papers or studies that were non-English, failed to include PROMs, or were not specific to shoulder literature were excluded.
RESULTS: A total of 7,416 studies were reviewed and 3,473 met the inclusion criteria. PROMIS instruments were used in 115 studies (3.3%), with utilization increasing from 0.0% in 2015 to 5.5% in 2025 (absolute increase, 5.5%; 95% CI, 3.0%-7.9%; p = 0.001). The majority of studies utilizing PROMIS were published in the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery and related journals (60.9%), rotator cuff disorders and shoulder arthroplasty were the most commonly reported topics. The most frequently reported PROMIS domains were Upper Extremity (60.0%), Pain Interference (47.8%), and Physical Function (33.9%). PROMIS instruments were used more commonly in conjunction with traditional outcome measures (69.6%), instead of as a stand-alone PROM; it was most commonly paired to the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeon (ASES) outcome measure (60.0%). During the study period, there was no significant increase in the number of PROMs collected per study over time (β = 0.008 PROMs per year, P = 0.388, R2 = 0.08). Constant score (CS), Simple Shoulder Test (SST) and ASES score were the three most commonly reported outcome scores for shoulder condition. CS and SST utilization demonstrated a significant decline (p<0.01), while the increase in ASES utilization was not significant during the study period.
CONCLUSIONS: Although PROMIS enables a standardized, patient-centered assessment of orthopedic conditions, the current study demonstrates its limited adoption over the past decade as a primary outcome measure for shoulder conditions compared to traditional legacy scores.
LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Research Methodology, Systematic Review.
Read the article: PubMed · Publisher (DOI)