Article

OBJECTIVES: To (1) develop the Manual Tactile Test (MTT) for evaluating the hand
perception to distinguish objects' characteristics; (2) establish the reliability
and validity of the MTT for patients with carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS); and (3)
integrate a normative database into the test. DESIGN: Cohort and case-control
studies. SETTING: Hospital and local community. PARTICIPANTS: Participants
included patients with CTS (n=70) and healthy volunteers (n=125). Twenty young
volunteers were enrolled to evaluate the reliability of the test. Seventy
patients with CTS and 70 age- and sex-matched controls were recruited to
establish the discriminate validity and receiver operating characteristic (ROC)
curves for the MTT. A normative database was constructed from 125 healthy,
right-handed participants. INTERVENTIONS: Not applicable. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:
The MTT was designed to discriminate the characteristics of the objects' weight
(barognosis test), texture (roughness differentiation test), and shape
(stereognosis test) via active hand exploration. The times required
discriminating the characteristics of objects and the accuracy of judgment were
recorded and analyzed. RESULTS: High Cronbach alpha values (.83-.91) and small
coefficient of variation (.10-.16) values showed that the MTT is a reliable
testing tool. The results significantly discriminated the patients from the
control group (P<.001). The sensitivity and specificity were .64 to .81 and .73
to .76, respectively, for the 3 subtests. The ROC curve area for the 3 subtests
ranged from .70 to .84. The results of the MTT obtained from 125 healthy subjects
showed that age significantly affects hand perceptive function (P<.001).
CONCLUSIONS: The MTT is a reliable, accurate, and valid tool for determining the
impairment of manual touch sensibility for CTS and can help clinicians understand
age-related degradation in sensorimotor control of the hand in the elderly
population.
CI - Copyright (c) 2013 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Langue : ANGLAIS