Measuring overall outcome in Canterbury

When evaluating the overall success of treatment from the patient’s point of view we usually ask them to rate the outcome on the following scale, which has been chosen so that most patients will agree on what the divisions mean:

- Worse - The hand is more of a problem after treatment than it was before - whether or not the symptoms have changed in character

- Unchanged - Symptoms after treatment are about as much of a nuisance as they were beforehand

- Slightly better - There has been an improvement, but there are still symptoms which are a significant nuisance and which the patient would prefer to be without given the choice. This grade implies that one would seek treatment for this if it was available.

- Much better - The hand is satisfactory to the extent that no further treatment would be sought even if available, but the patient can still detect that it is not quite as it was before the development of CTS.- 

- Complete cure - the hand has returned to exactly the state it was in before it ever had CTS with the exception (in the case of surgical treatment) of the presence of a visible scar which is unavoidable. In all other respects, a hand graded like this is ‘as good as new’.

If you are creating your own record of your CTS in this site and there is space to record an overall opinion on the effect of your treatment you should use this scale where possible.

Revision date - 23rd August 2015