Prevalence and incidence of adults consulting for shoulder conditions in UK primary care; patterns of diagnosis and referral.
OBJECTIVE
To estimate the national prevalence and incidence of adults consulting for a shoulder condition and to investigate patterns of diagnosis, treatment, consultation and referral 3 yr after initial presentation.


METHODS
Prevalence and incidence rates were estimated for 658469 patients aged 18 and over in the year 2000 using a primary care database, the IMS Disease Analyzer-Mediplus UK. A cohort of 9215 incident cases was followed-up prospectively for 3 yr beyond the initial consultation.


RESULTS
The annual prevalence and incidence of people consulting for a shoulder condition was 2.36% [95% confidence interval (CI) 2.32-2.40%] and 1.47% (95% CI 1.44-1.50%), respectively. Prevalence increased linearly with age whilst incidence peaked at around 50 yr then remained static at around 2%. Around half of the incident cases consulted once only, while 13.6% were still consulting with a shoulder problem during the third year of follow-up. During the 3 yr following initial presentation, 22.4% of patients were referred to secondary care, 30.8% were prescribed non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and 10.6% were given an injection by their general practitioner (GP). GPs tended to use a limited number of generalized codes when recording a diagnosis; just five of 426 possible Read codes relating to shoulder conditions accounted for 74.6% of the diagnoses of new cases recorded by GPs.


CONCLUSIONS
The prevalence of people consulting for shoulder problems in primary care is substantially lower than community-based estimates of shoulder pain. Most referrals occur within 3 months of initial presentation, but only a minority of patients are referred to orthopaedic specialists or rheumatologists. GPs may lack confidence in applying precise diagnoses to shoulder conditions.
Linsell
L
L
Medical Statistician, Centre for Statistics in Medicine, Wolfson College Annexe, Linton Road, Oxford OX2 6UD, UK. louise.linsell@cancer.org.uk
Dawson
J
J
Zondervan
K
K
Rose
P
P
Randall
T
T
Fitzpatrick
R
R
Carr
A
A
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000894:Anti-Inflammatory Agents, Non-Steroidal / Q000627:therapeutic use; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007270:Injections, Intra-Articular; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012017:Referral and Consultation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D017678:Sex Distribution; D020069:Shoulder Pain / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology / Q000628:therapy; D006113:United Kingdom / Q000453:epidemiology
D000894:Anti-Inflammatory Agents, Non-Steroidal