ICF Core Sets for the assessment of functioning of adults with cerebral palsy.
Suzie Noten, Melissa Selb, Lorenzo A A Troenosemito and 4 others
PMID 34800032WHAT IT FOUND
Experts created a checklist of 33 essential categories to assess functioning in adults with cerebral palsy.
This brief set highlights mobility, self-care, pain, and environmental factors like support services, aiming to standardise care for this growing population.
Key findings
01The brief ICF Core Set for adults with CP includes 33 categories: 9 body functions, 2 body structures, 14 activities and participation, and 8 environmental factors.
02The comprehensive ICF Core Set includes 120 categories, with mobility and self-care being the most frequently covered activities and participation areas.
03Participants included adults with CP and parents of adults with CP in the consensus process to ensure the perspectives of those affected were represented.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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 consensus process was conducted online due to the pandemic, which may have reduced the quality of interaction compared to face-to-face meetings. Some professional backgrounds, such as neurology and social work, were underrepresented among the 25 participants. The brief set uses a strict cut-off, so some relevant categories (like specific body structures or equipment use) were excluded despite expert arguments for their importance. The sets have not yet been validated for usefulness in clinical care across different cultural contexts.
Declared interests
The paper does not list specific financial conflicts of interest for the authors in the provided text, but notes support from non-U.S. government sources in the metadata. The methodology was based on WHO and ICF Research Branch guidelines.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat this as evidence that these categories improve patient outcomes. The study created a consensus checklist for assessment; it did not test whether using these sets changes clinical results or patient health.