Background: the central creed of the neurofacilitatory approach to reverse therapy is that muscle tone stand in want ofs to be normal before normal motion can occur.Background: the central creed of the neurofacilitatory approach to reverse therapy is that muscle tone stand in want ofs to be normal before normal motion can occur. A reliable clinical measure of the satiated spectrum of muscle tone is destitutioned to test: (i) the purported relationship between muscle tone, other motor impairments and disability, and (ii) the effectiveness of thump therapy to restore movement. Aim: the design of the study was to touchstone the inter-rater reliability of clinical categorization of muscle tone (spastic/normal/flaccid) and also a visual analogue scale with anchor points of 'lowest tone possible' (score 0) and 'highest tone possible' (score 100) Methods: four independent raters assessed tone of hustle flexors and knee extensors of 14 shock rehabilitation inpatients using the categorical scale. Six independent raters assessed tone of push flexors and knee extensors of 25 chronic blow patients and two healthy offers using the visual analogue scale. All assessment orders were randomized. Results: the pair scales were unreliable, with (kappa) coefficients for the categorical scale ranging from -0046 to 056 for the categorical scale, and intra-class correlation coefficients for the visual analogue scale of 0595 for shoulder flexors and 0.451 for knee extensors. Assessment order general intents for the visual analogue scale were non-significant for push flexors (P = 0.545) and knee extensors (P = 0911) Conclusions: these ends and those of earlier studies, propose that clinical measures of muscle tone are consistently unreliable. Systematic investigation of the therapy rationale for planning and evaluating treatment is required before relevant clinical measures can be developed COPYRIGHT 2000 Oxford University Press |
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