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J Bone Joint Surg [Br] 2008;90-B:545-9.Orthopaedic outcome measures are used to evaluate the effect of operative interventions. They are used for audit and research. Knowledge of these measures is becoming increasingly important with league tables comparing surgeons and hospitals being made accessible to the profession and the general public.Several types of tool are available to describe outcome after hip surgery such as generic quality-of-life questionnaires, disease-specific quality-of-life questionnaires, hip-specific outcome measures and general short-term clinical measures. We provide an overview of the outcome measures commonly used to evaluate hip interventions.Orthopaedic interventions are assessed on their outcome. Outcome scores are used for research purposes to compare prostheses, surgical techniques, methods of fixation and types of peri-operative care. They are also used for audit to allow comparison between surgeons, departments, institutions and countries. Outcome after surgery can be defined in many different ways such as mortality, morbidity, clinical findings, radiological findings, postoperative complications, rates of re-operation, pain, length of hospital stay and health-related quality-of-life.Generic short-term clinical outcomes address overall morbidity and mortality related to surgery. Mortality at a variety of time points, the duration of post-operative stay and the incidence of specific complications fall within this group. Morbidity and complications are poorly and inconsistently recorded.