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Cited by 358

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 23 of the 23 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Prevalence and incidence of adults consulting for shoulder conditions in UK primary care; patterns of diagnosis and referral

Open access
Linsell, L., Dawson, J., Zondervan, K., Rose, P., Randall, T., Fitzpatrick, R., Carr, A.·2006·Rheumatology

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: 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.

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Metadata

Authors
Linsell, L., Dawson, J., Zondervan, K., Rose, P., Randall, T., Fitzpatrick, R., & Carr, A.
Venue
Rheumatology
Published
2005-11-01
Volume
45
Issue
2
Pages
215-221
ISSN
  • 1462-0324 (ISSN-L)
  • 1462-0332
OpenAlex
W2135179579
Cited by
358
References
23
FWCI
2.35
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Prevalence and incidence of adults consulting for shoulder conditions in UK primary care; patterns of diagnosis and referral. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1093/rheumatology/kei139
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Linsell, L., Dawson, J., Zondervan, K., Rose, P., Randall, T., Fitzpatrick, R., & Carr, A. (2006). Prevalence and incidence of adults consulting for shoulder conditions in UK primary care; patterns of diagnosis and referral. Rheumatology. https://doi.org/10.1093/rheumatology/kei139

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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