Reliability of laser-assisted hindfoot alignment evaluation.
Tadasuke Ohnishi, Mitsumasa Hida, Takayuki Nagasaki and 1 others
PMID 32082026WHAT IT FOUND
In 12 healthy adults, a laser-based standing hindfoot alignment check was consistent when repeated by the same briefly trained non-expert, but agreement between two such examiners was only moderate.
Key findings
01Repeating the laser alignment check after 7 to 10 days gave agreement of 0.74 for each examiner.
02Agreement between examiners was 0.43 and was rated moderate.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
Only 12 healthy adults were tested, and only the right foot was measured, so the study does not show how the method performs in patients with foot pain or deformity. The examiners were general students without medical knowledge after a 20-minute lecture, so the results may not apply to clinicians with more training. Inter-rater agreement was 0.43, so two examiners may not assign the same alignment grade. The methods mention kappa coefficients, but the reported reliability values are intraclass correlation coefficients, so the statistical basis is unclear.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest directly relevant to the article.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that laser-assisted hindfoot alignment evaluation is reliable enough for clinical decision making. It was tested in only 12 healthy adults, with the right foot measured, by two briefly trained non-experts, and agreement between examiners was moderate.