A new method for evaluating joint position sense using oral instructions based on body schema.
Hironari Yazawa, Toshirou Okagawa, Kaoru Toda and 1 others
PMID 30349165WHAT IT FOUND
In healthy people, a new oral shoulder position test produced 90-degree angles similar to conventional tests, but 45-degree angles differed.
Older adults reached lower angles, and children varied more.
Key findings
01At 90 degrees shoulder abduction, the schema method showed no significant differences in mean abduction angle compared with reproduction and imitation methods.
02At 45 degrees shoulder abduction, the schema method differed significantly from reproduction and imitation in mean abduction angle and absolute error.
03In 40 youth, 19 elderly, and 16 juveniles tested with the schema method at Target 90, elderly had lower mean abduction angle than youth, and juveniles had higher variable error than youth and elderly.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study was done only in healthy people, so it does not show how the method behaves in patients with shoulder disorders. Only separate age groups were tested, so continuous age-related changes could not be shown. Shoulder position sense was tested only in abduction, not in other shoulder movements. The oral-instruction method was inaccurate at the lower target angle, and results could depend on how instructions are understood. The authors had not confirmed inter-rater reliability for the oral-instruction method.
Declared interests
The authors reported no conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat this as evidence that the oral-instruction method is clinically valid for shoulder patients. It was tested only in healthy people, and it differed from conventional methods at 45 degrees.