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Intrarater reliability of lower limb sagittal range‐of‐motion measures in children with spastic diplegia
Author(s) -
Kilgour Gaela,
McNair Peter,
Stott N Susan
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
developmental medicine and child neurology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.658
H-Index - 143
eISSN - 1469-8749
pISSN - 0012-1622
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8749.2003.tb00418.x
Subject(s) - spastic diplegia , spasticity , diplegia , cerebral palsy , physical therapy , medicine , spastic , sagittal plane , ankle , range of motion , physical medicine and rehabilitation , spastic cerebral palsy , surgery , radiology
In this study, 10 sagittal lower limb range‐of‐motion measures were conducted in a blinded fashion in 25 children with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy and in 25 age‐ and sex‐matched controls. The participants comprised 22 males, mean age 10 years 8 months and 28 females, with mean age 9 years 8 months; age range 6 to 17 years. One paediatric physical therapist performed duplicate goniometric measures at zero time and 7 days later using the same sequence of measures, location, and time of day. Mean absolute differences for measures within one session ranged from 0.7 to 2.9° in controls and from 1 to 4.2° in children with spastic diplegia. Most intra‐class correlation coefficients (ICCs) for intra‐sessional measures were more than 0.90 in both groups. Measures between sessions were less reliable. Mean absolute differences between sessions were up to 7.1° for children with spastic diplegia and 8.6° for controls, with most ICCs being less than 0.80. Inter‐sessional variation in measures was similar in both groups, suggesting that measurement variability is not influenced by the presence of spasticity. Averaging of two measures did not improve inter‐sessional reliability compared with the use of a single measure. Dynamic measures (R1) were as reliable as passive measures (R2), but there were inter‐sessional differences in calculations using R1 and R2 measures of up to 30°.