A new clinical test for cervicocephalic kinesthetic sensibility: "the fly"

• Published in: Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
• Main Authors: Kristjansson, Eythor, Hardardottir, Lilja, Asmundardottir, Matthildur, Gudmundsson, Karl
• Other Authors: Faculty of Medicine, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: W.B. Saunders 2010
• Subjects: Adult; Chronic Disease; Diagnosis; Computer-Assisted; Female; Head Movements; Humans; Kinesthesis; Middle Aged; Neck; Reproducibility of Results; Sensation Disorders; Whiplash Injuries; Iceland
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2336/110514; https://doi.org/10.1016/S0003-9993(03)00619-1

To access publisher full text version of this article. Please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links field OBJECTIVE: To investigate the reliability and discriminative ability of a new test designed to detect accuracy of neck movements. DESIGN: Repeated-measures. Case-control. SETTING: University musculoskeletal research clinic in Iceland. PARTICIPANTS: Twenty women (mean age +/- standard deviation [SD], 30.8+/-9.1 y; range, 18-49 y) with chronic whiplash-associated disorders (WAD) grades I and II (duration, 6 mo-6 y), with current pain score on a visual analog scale of 46.8+/-21.8, and a disability score on the Northwick Park Neck Pain Disability Index of 45%+/-14%. Twenty asymptomatic women (mean age +/- SD, 29.3+/-8.6 y; range, 18-48 y) with no history of whiplash or insidious onset neck pain served as controls. INTERVENTION: A slowly moving object appeared on a computer screen and traced an unpredictable movement path that the subjects were required to follow by moving their heads. Three randomly ordered movement patterns were tested. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: A new software program connected to a 3Space Fastrak system was used to measure the mean absolute error (in millimeters) of 3 trials in each movement pattern. RESULTS: The mean differences (+/-2 SD) between days 1 and 2 were.01+/-.64 mm for the asymptomatic group and.33+/-1.80 mm for the WAD group. The between-day intraclass correlation coefficients were between.60 and.77 for the asymptomatic group and.79 and.86 for the WAD group. Repeated-measures analysis of variance revealed a significant difference between groups (P=.02). The Tukey post hoc test showed significant between-group differences for each movement pattern (P