Single Assessment Numeric Evaluation Correlates with American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons Score for Common Elbow Pathology: A Retrospective Cohort Study.

Background: There are currently a variety of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) for elbow pathology, without any established gold standard. The Single Assessment Numeric Evaluation (SANE) is a single question assessment of the patient's perceived overall function compared with normal. The SANE score has been correlated with PROs from the shoulder and knee literature.

Purpose: To correlate the SANE score for a variety of elbow pathologies with a traditionally reported elbow outcome measure, the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons-Elbow score (ASES-E).

Study Design: Cohort study (diagnosis); Level of evidence, 3.

Methods: A retrospective review was performed of all patients identified at a single center between April 2016 and January 2019 who presented as a new patient with elbow pathology. All patients prospectively completed the ASES-E along with the SANE score for elbow (SANE-E) at the time of initial consultation. Spearman correlations () were performed to evaluate the correlation between the ASES-E and the SANE-E score for specific elbow pathology, along with descriptive data such as age, sex, and chronicity of the problem.

Results: A total of 555 patients (166 women, 29.9%) with a mean ± SD age of 51.0 ± 11.7 years with the diagnoses of medial epicondylitis (n = 72; 13.0%), lateral epicondylitis (n = 224; 40.4%), biceps tendon rupture (n = 139; 25.0%), triceps tendon rupture (n = 21; 3.8%), and elbow arthritis (n = 99; 17.8%) were included in this analysis. There was moderate correlation between the SANE-E and the ASES-E ( = 0.623; < .001), with strongest correlation with the visual analog scale (VAS) ( = -0.518; < .001) compared with any individual question and moderate to strong correlations based on specific diagnoses. SANE-E and ASES-E scores for the entire cohort were 42.9 ± 26.7 and 56.9 ± 21.4, respectively ( < .001). Age ( = 0.027; = .526), sex ( = 0.026; = .555), VAS ( = -0.106; = .013), and chronicity of the problem ( = -0.037; = .384) were not found to be correlated with differences in ASES-E and SANE-E.

Conclusion: The SANE-E score is a simple way to assess patient-perceived function relative to normal. The findings of this study demonstrated moderate to strong correlation between the ASES-E and the SANE-E score for a variety of commonly encountered elbow conditions.