Client-Specific Outcome Measures (CSOM)

Overview

Developer

Lascelles, Hansen, Roe — North Carolina State University

Year published

2008

Species

Canine and feline

Domain

Owner-defined activity tracking

Structure and administration

3 to 5 owner-defined activities per pet, each rated on a 0-4 Likert scale (0 = does it normally, 4 = cannot do it). Total range 0 to N*4 where N is the active activity count.

Owner-completed, 2-3 minutes per check-in. Initial setup (defining activities and baselines) takes 5-10 minutes once per pet.

Cut-off and interpretation

Cut-off threshold

0

Source: CSOM has no validated cut-off. The published methodology (Lascelles et al. 2008) treats CSOM as a within-subject change instrument: the meaningful comparison is each activity's current score against its own baseline, not against a population threshold.

Citation and validation

Lascelles BDX, Hansen BD, Roe S, DePuy V, Thomson A, Pierce CC, Smith ES, Rowinski E. Evaluation of client-specific outcome measures and activity monitoring to measure pain relief in cats with osteoarthritis. Vet Surg 2008;37:412-421.

Revisions

• v1.0 (Lascelles et al. 2008) — original CSOM methodology proposed for cats with osteoarthritis. The approach is now widely used across small-animal pain management.

Target population

Any pet whose chronic pain or quality of life is most accurately tracked through specific, owner-relevant activities (climbing the school-run stile, jumping on the sofa, holding their head high on walks). Particularly useful when generic instruments do not capture the activity that matters to the household.

Available languages

English (UK)

Licence

Public methodology, no licence fee. Activity wording is owner-authored per pet.

Scoring algorithm version

sightline-csom-v1.0.0

Strengths

• Personalised: the activities tracked are exactly the ones the household cares about, which keeps owner engagement high.
• Within-subject design: each activity's baseline is its own reference, which makes change detection sensitive even for unusual or breed-specific activities.
• Short administration once set up — most owners finish a check-in in two to three minutes.
• Public methodology, no licence fee, no per-deployment paperwork.

Limitations

• Not standardised across pets — two dogs both scoring 8 on CSOM may be tracking entirely different things, so CSOM cannot be used to compare across animals.
• Owner-authored activity wording can drift over time; Sightline freezes the activity description against an assessment so historical comparisons remain valid even if the wording is later refined.
• No published cut-off or band classification, so CSOM is an adjunct to a validated instrument like HCPI, LOAD, FMPI-SF, or MI-CAT(C), not a replacement.
• If the owner sets baselines on a particularly bad day, future improvements look misleadingly large; baseline edits remain available from the setup page to correct this.

Why Sightline uses it

CSOM is the only widely-used owner-administered method that captures activities the validated instruments cannot — the school-run stile, the family-favourite cat-tower jump, the school-pickup walk. Pairing CSOM with a validated total-score instrument gives Sightline a two-axis view: the validated score for population-relative interpretation, and the CSOM deltas for activities the household actually cares about. The published Lascelles 2008 methodology is the foundation, and the platform-shape (within-subject delta) is what drives ongoing engagement after the first six check-ins.