Revised Oswestry Thoracic Pain Disability Questionnaire

The Revised Oswestry Thoracic Pain Disability Questionnaire is an adaptation of the Revised Oswestry Disability Questionnaire for patients with thoracic (middle back) pain. It is a patient-completed outcome measure of how pain affects the ability to manage in everyday life.

The questionnaire has 10 sections. In each section the patient selects the ONE statement which most closely describes their problem, scored from 0 to 5. The sections are: Pain Intensity, Personal Care, Lifting, Walking, Sitting, Standing, Sleeping, Social Life, Traveling, and Changing Degree of Pain. A separate 0–10 pain severity rating is recorded but does not count toward the index.

Scoring instructions (from the questionnaire):

1. To determine the patient's index, add up the total points from all sections and divide this total by 50 (total possible points). Multiply that number by 100.

2. Using this system, a score of 10–28% (i.e., 5–14 points) is considered by the authors to constitute mild disability; 30–48% is moderate; 50–68% is severe; 72% or more is complete.

Original Literature:

J. C. T. Fairbank, J. Couper, J. B. Davies, and J. P. O’Brien. “The Oswestry low back pain disability questionnaire.” Physiotherapy 66 (1980): 271–273.

Revised version:

Hudson-Cook N., Tomes-Nicholson K., and Breen A. “A revised Oswestry disability questionnaire.” In: Roland M. and Jenner J. R. (eds.), Back Pain: New Approaches to Rehabilitation and Education. Manchester University Press (1989): 187–204.

Additional Literature:

Fairbank, Jeremy C. T., and Paul B. Pynsent. “The Oswestry disability index.” Spine 25.22 (2000): 2940–2953.

The original Oswestry Disability Index was developed by Dr. Jeremy Fairbank and colleagues at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Oswestry, UK. Dr. Fairbank is a Professor of Spinal Surgery at the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences, University of Oxford.

The revised wording used in this questionnaire was published by Hudson-Cook, Tomes-Nicholson and Breen (1989) at the Anglo-European College of Chiropractic, and has since been adapted for thoracic (middle back) pain.

To view Dr. Fairbank's publications, please visit PubMed.