ABSTRACT
The aim of this study was to investigate the intra-rater reliability of the Modified Modified Ashworth Scale (MMAS) in the upper limb of patients with hemiparesis and to determine the effect of pain and contracture presence on the reliability of the MMAS. For this test-retest study 30 patients with hemiparesis were included. One physiotherapist using the MMAS, randomly rated the spasticity of shoulder adductors, elbow flexors, and wrist flexors in the affected upper limb of each patient with hemiparesis twice with at least a 1 week interval between testing sessions. The presence of pain and contracture during passive stretch was recorded. The magnitude of the contracture was measured by a goniometer. The quadratic weighted kappa statistics was very good for the upper limb spasticity (κw= 0.84). Intra-rater reliability was good for shoulder adductors (κw=0.75), and very good for elbow flexors and wrist flexors (κw 0.86 and 0.90, respectively). There were no differences between the weighted kappa values for muscle groups (p>0.05). The intra-rater reliability was also good in the presence of pain or contracture. The MMAS had very good intra-rater reliability in the assessment of upper limb spasticity in patients with hemiparesis. The presence of pain during shoulder abduction or contracture of the shoulder adductors had no influence on the reliability of the MMAS (κ w=0.75, 0.77, respectively).
Subject(s)
Muscle Spasticity/diagnosis , Pain Measurement , Pain/diagnosis , Severity of Illness Index , Upper Extremity/physiopathology , Adult , Aged , Aged, 80 and over , Female , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Muscle Spasticity/complications , Pain/etiology , Reproducibility of Results , Young AdultABSTRACT
The Modified Modified Ashworth Scale (MMAS) is a simple clinical outcome measure to assess muscle spasticity in people with brain injury. The objective of this cross-sectional study was to assess the interrater reliability of the MMAS in the upper limb of adult patients with hemiplegia. Participants were fifteen patients with a mean age of 57.3 +/- 14.4 years. They had brain injury on average 33.3 +/- 26.2 months earlier. Two common spastic muscle groups (elbow flexor and wrist flexor) on the hemiparetic side of the patients were rated by two physiotherapists according to a standardized protocol. The order of raters' assessment and the sequence of muscle testing was randomized. The weighted Kappa (kappaw) values were calculated for reliability. The kappaw was 0.61 for elbow flexor and 0.78 for wrist flexor. Results support the good interrater reliability of the MMAS for persons with upper limb spasticity.
