The DASH (Disabilities of the Arm,Shoulder and Hand) Outcome Measure: What do we know about it now?

Outcome measurement is an essential component for defining the effectiveness of clinicians’ practice (Reiman 1988) and standardised measures make that job more consistent, comparable and valid (Cole et al 1994). Hand therapists have long recognised the need for the standardisation of outcome measures, particularly for performance-based measures such as strength testing (Mathiowetz et al 1985, Woody et al 1988) or joint motion. More recently there has been an increased interest in outcome measures that capture the patient's perspective of their status, and that are standardised. The DASH (Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand) is a standardised outcome measure that could be used for this purpose (Hudak et al 1996, McConnell et al 1999). The DASH reflects the impact of a disorder in terms of physical function and symptoms, which are the two main reasons patients seek care for a disorder of the musculoskeletal system. The DASH is becoming widely used by clinicians and researchers (McConnell et al 1999). It is now important to revisit what we know about how well the DASH is able to measure what it purports to measure.

The purpose of this paper is to review the research that has been done to date on the DASH outcome measure, and to describe the implications of this for future research and for clinical practice.