The reliability, validity and clinical utility of the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation - ten-item version (CORE-10) in post-acute patients with stroke.

The sample was restricted to patients without moderate to severe aphasia, meaning the results do not apply to patients with significant communication impairments. The test–retest interval was short (average 2.84 days), which may have inflated reliability scores due to recall effects. The 'clinical' comparison sample was defined by clinician referral concerns rather than formal diagnostic interviews, which may affect the precision of the clinically significant change cutoff. The study was conducted in a single post-acute inpatient setting, so results may not generalize to community or acute stroke populations. Item-level data were not available for the clinical sample, requiring an assumption that reliability values were equivalent to the research sample when calculating change indices.

The authors declared no specific conflicts of interest in the provided text, but noted that the CORE-10 is freely available and incurs no costs or specialist training requirements. The study was part of routine clinical assessment processes on the ward where the researchers worked.

Do not assume the CORE-10 is valid for patients with moderate to severe aphasia, as they were explicitly excluded from this study. Additionally, a change of less than 9 points should not be interpreted as genuine clinical improvement or deterioration, as it falls within the range of measurement error.