Linking the Pre-Assessment Information Form (PIF) to the ICF: Enhancing Standardized Functional Assessment in Parkinson's Disease.
Fernanda Botta Tarallo Rogatto, Érica Tardelli Neves Guelfi, Vívian Elaine Vargas Alflen and 3 others
The PIF, a pre-assessment form for Parkinson's physiotherapy, maps predominantly to mobility and self-care, with no coverage of participation, cognition, or environmental factors.
It captures walking and transfers in detail but says nothing about social roles, thinking, or the patient's environment.
Key findings
126 PIF items were linked to 25 unique ICF categories; 84% fell under Activities and Participation, and within that, 66.7% were in the mobility domain (d4), followed by self-care (19.0%) and domestic life (9.5%). The single most frequent category was d450 Walking.
2The PIF generates no linked concepts for participation (d7, d8, d9), environmental factors (e), or cognitive functions such as attention, executive function, and working memory. The authors note these are clinically significant in PD but fall outside the form's scope.
3Inter-rater agreement between the two independent evaluators was moderate (kappa 0.42–0.54), with disagreements most frequent at the third taxonomy level, concentrated in gait items such as start walking, stop walking, and walking through narrow passages.
Still to come
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
Only 26 items from the PIF were linked; the results describe the content of those selected items, not the full spectrum of patient-reported functioning in Parkinson's disease. Moderate inter-rater agreement (kappa 0.42–0.54) means that at finer taxonomy levels the classification still involves a degree of judgment, even among trained evaluators. The practical applicability of the ICF-coded PIF in routine physiotherapy documentation has not been tested; feasibility and acceptability among physiotherapists with varying ICF familiarity remain unknown. This is a classification exercise with no human participants; it does not validate the PIF's clinical utility, sensitivity, or ability to detect change over time.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest and report no funding.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the ICF mapping as validation that the PIF is a comprehensive functional assessment for Parkinson's disease. The study shows the form covers mobility and self-care in detail but contains no items addressing participation, cognition, or environmental factors. A patient whose main struggle is social withdrawal, executive dysfunction, or an unsafe home environment will not be flagged by the PIF, and the ICF linkage does not change that.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →