[Validity and reliability of Spinal Mouse to assess lumbar flexion].

OBJECTIVES

To evaluate the validity and reliability of the Spinal Mouse model to assess lumbar spine flexion.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

For the validity study, patients with low-back pain underwent radiography to produce 2 lateral radiographs, first from the neutral position, and then with full trunk flexion. The correlation between mobility as assessed by radiography and the Spinal Mouse were evaluated by use of Spearman's correlation coefficient (SCC) for segmental mobility (L1-L2, L2-L3, L3-L4, L4-L5 and L5-S1) and global mobility (L1-L5 and L1-S1). Reliability was studied in healthy volunteers by the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC).

RESULTS

A total of 20 patients (8 women) aged 41.6+/-8.6 (range 24-63), were included in the validity study. The SCC between radiography and Spinal Mouse measures were 0.55; 0.64; 0.69; 0.54; 0.19; 0.7; and 0.86 for flexion mobility of the L1-L2, L2-L3, L3-L4, L4-L5, L5-S1, L1-L5 and L1-S1, respectively. A total of 45 subjects aged 24.2+/-3.7 (range 20-29) were included for the reliability study. For intrarater reliability, the ICC was 0.84; 0.89; 0.96; 0.97; 0.63; 0.95 and 0.83 for the L1-L2, L2-L3, L3-L4, L4-L5, L5-S1, L5-S1, L1-L5 and L1-S1, respectively. For interrater reliability, the ICC was 0.75; 0.81; 0.79; 0.60; 0.83; 0.85, respectively.

CONCLUSION

The Spinal Mouse has acceptable metrological properties to assess segmental and global lumbar mobility during trunk flexion. Its metrological properties are not acceptable to assess mobility of L5-S1.