WOMAC stands for the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Arthritis Index, which was developed in 1982 to evaluate hip and knee osteoarthritis. It is a self-administered questionnaire with 24 items divided into pain, stiffness, and physical function subscales. Scores are summed for each subscale and a total WOMAC score, with higher scores indicating worse pain, stiffness, and limitations. KOOS stands for the Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score, which was developed as an extension of WOMAC to evaluate knee injuries and osteoarthritis. It assesses pain, daily activities, symptoms, sport/recreation function, and quality of life. Scores are transformed to a 0-

1. By – Bimal Maurya
Galgotias University

2. WHAT IS WOMAC ?
WOMAC stands for Western Ontario and McMaster Universities
Arthritis Index .
WOMAC Index was developed in 1982 at Western Ontario and
McMaster University .
It is available in over 65 languages and has been linguistically
validated.
It is widely used in the evaluation of Hip and Knee
Osteoarthritis.

3. It is a self-administered questionnaire consisting of 24 items
divided into 3 subscales:
 Pain (5 items): during walking, using stairs, in bed, sitting or
lying, and standing upright
Stiffness (2 items): after first waking and later in the day
 Physical Function (17 items): using stairs, rising from sitting,
standing, bending, walking, getting in / out of a car, shopping,
putting on / taking off socks, rising from bed, lying in bed,
getting in / out of bath, sitting, getting on / off toilet, heavy
domestic duties, light domestic duties

4. Interpretation of scores
The test questions are scored on a scale of 0-4, which
correspond to: None (0), Mild (1), Moderate (2), Severe (3), and
Extreme (4).
The scores for each subscale are summed up, with a possible
score range of 0-20 for Pain, 0-8 for Stiffness, and 0-68 for
Physical Function.
Sum of the scores for all three subscales gives a total WOMAC
score, however there are other methods that have been used to
combine scores.
Higher scores on the WOMAC indicate worse pain, stiffness, and
functional limitations.

6. WHAT IS KOOS ?
KOOS stands for Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome
Score.
It was developed as an extension of the WOMAC
Osteoarthritis Index with the purpose of evaluating short-
term and long-term symptoms and function in subjects with
knee injury and osteoarthritis.
The KOOS is self-administered and assesses five outcomes:
pain, activities of daily living, Symptoms, sport and recreation
function, and knee-related quality of life.

7. The KOOS is a valid, reliable and responsive self-administered
instrument that can be used for short-term and long-term follow-
up of several types of knee injury including osteoarthritis.
The measure is relatively new and further use of the instrument will
add knowledge and suggest areas that need to be further explored
and improved.

8. Interpretation of scores
Scores are transformed to a 0–100 scale, with zero
representing no knee problems and 100 representing extreme
knee problems as common in orthopedics scales and generic
measures.
Scores between 0 and 100 represent the percentage of total
possible score achieved.