Quantitative clinical assessment of wrist proprioception with stroke survivors.
Yvonne Yk Mak-Yuen, Thomas A Matyas, Kylee Lockwood and 1 others
PMID 41490166WHAT IT FOUND
A 10-trial wrist position sense test identifies impairment with 85.3% sensitivity and 95.7% specificity compared to the 20-trial version.
Updated cut-off scores allow clinicians to confidently diagnose proprioceptive loss after stroke without adjusting for age, sex, or hand dominance.
Key findings
01The brief 10-trial version of the Wrist Position Sense Test has a sensitivity of 85.3% and specificity of 95.7% for detecting contralesional wrist impairment when compared to the original 20-trial version.
02Updated normative criteria for abnormality are 11.1 degrees average error for the 20-trial version and 10.9 degrees for the 10-trial version, with no need for adjustments based on age, sex, or hand dominance.
03Using these updated criteria, 66% of stroke survivors showed impairment in the contralesional hand and 21% in the ipsilesional hand.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The sample was drawn primarily from metropolitan Melbourne, English-speaking populations, which may limit generalisability to other cultural or geographic contexts. Participants were recruited from sub-acute and chronic rehabilitation phases, so the test's utility in acute stroke settings is less certain. Some studies in the pool pre-screened for somatosensory loss, which might affect the prevalence rates reported. The effect of age at the extreme ends of the distribution remains uncertain due to smaller sample sizes in those groups.
Declared interests
Two authors developed the Wrist Position Sense Test. The study was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia and La Trobe University.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume the 10-trial test is a perfect substitute for the 20-trial test in all contexts. It has a 14.7% miss rate for contralesional impairment, meaning it may fail to detect some cases that the longer test would identify.
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 →