Reliability, validity and discriminant ability of the instrumental indices provided by a novel planar robotic device for upper limb rehabilitation.

This is a cross-sectional baseline analysis, not a treatment trial, so it cannot show whether the robot scores improve after therapy or whether the robot causes recovery. Responsiveness was not tested; a longitudinal design would be needed to see if scores change after rehabilitation. The device-specific scores cannot be assumed to match scores from other robots because support, mechanics and control differ. Duration and mean speed changed between first and second days, partly because no practice trial was given, so single first-day values may not be stable. Total work was weakly related to clinical scales and did not distinguish patients from healthy subjects. Healthy-subject reliability for many distance measures was poor because those scores had very little variation. Movement smoothness was not assessed. Patients with very mild upper limb function, defined as an upper limb Fugl-Meyer score above 58, were excluded.

Do not conclude that MOTORE improves upper limb function; this paper only validated measurement indices from baseline testing. Do not use duration or speed scores from the first day alone to track change, because they changed significantly on retest, likely from familiarization.