European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

INTRA RATER RELIABILITY OF SMARTPHONE APPLICATION ON ELBOW EXTENSION RANGE OF MOTION IN UPPERLIMB NEURODYNAMIC TEST 1 IN CERVICAL RADICULOPATHY

Arunpraveenraj D.* and K. Jothi Prasanna*

ABSTRACT

Backround: Although diagnosis of cervical radiculopathy remains largely oriented towards clinical aspect. In order to justify proper assessment and therapeutic interventions and prove its effectiveness, physiotherapist need to incorporate certain objective measures in the practice. Hence its necessary to find out whether the measurements are reliable. Objective: To Evaluate the Intra -rater reliability of smartphone application in the assessment of elbow extension range of motion at pain onset and maximum tolerable point during the upper limb neuro dynamic test1(ULNTT1) among subjects with cervical radiculopathy. Study Design: Descriptive Design. SAMPLE SIZE: 45 subjects. STUDY SETTING: Physiotherapy Out Patient Department, SRM Medical college and research Centre. Procedure: 45 subjects were included in this study based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. The Intra-rater reliability was tested in 45 subjects with unilateral cervical radiculopathy by a single assessor with 1day interval using I handy app. Results: The ULNTT1 measures between the day 1 and day 2 pain onset were 19.77 and 19.66 and the ULNTT 1 measures between day 1 and day 2 pain tolerable level were 21.7 and 22.73 respectively. The inter class correlation coefficient for the intra rater reliability is 0.000 compared coefficient is significant at 0. 000. Table 1: shows the ‘r’ value to be highly statistically significant there by showing high correlation between day 1 and day 2 pain onset and pain tolerable. Table 2: shows the ‘r’ value to be highly significant there by showing high correlation between day 1 pain tolerable and day 2 pain tolerable. Conclusion: This study estimates the reliability of a smart phone app in measuring the pain response of upper limb nerve tension test 1 in subjects with cervical radiculopathy and the data justifies the incorporation of this tool into clinical practice.

Keywords: Reliability, Range of motion, I handy app, ULNTT1, Cervical radiculopathy.