ArticleMusculoskeletal care2025
An Exploration of the Content and Language Used in Publicly Available National Health Service Patient Information Leaflets for People Considering Shoulder Replacement Surgery: A Qualitative Study.
Article in Musculoskeletal care, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesThe decision to undergo total shoulder replacement surgery is a major one and should be a joint one between the patient and surgeon. It is important that patients are provided with accessible, meaningful and appropriate information to enable an informed decision. The aim of this study was to explore the content and language used within publicly available information leaflets produced by UK National Health Service (NHS) Trusts for people considering shoulder replacement surgery and to consider how this may influence surgical decision making.
designAn online search of publicly available NHS shoulder replacement patient information leaflets (PIL) was undertaken. The text within the PIL was analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.
resultsThirty-eight PIL were identified. The volume of information and content varied greatly. All PIL discussed the clinical problem, mainly within a biomedical framework and from a clinician's perspective in which normal shoulder anatomy was contrasted with shoulder pathology. Only a minority of the PIL discussed non-surgical treatments and of those that did, such approaches were predominantly portrayed as a temporary management option only, whilst surgery was frequently portrayed as the optimum treatment.
conclusionThere is variation in the content of NHS shoulder replacement PIL. The content and language used may not adequately support people in making an informed decision about whether surgery is the right treatment option for them. We need to better understand the information needs of people considering shoulder replacement surgery, and provide information that is accessible, culturally sensitive, and capable of facilitating shared decision making.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.