Department of Physical Therapy, School of Health Professions, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA.
J Vestib Res. 2021;31(5):365-373. doi: 10.3233/VES-201522.
Clinical vestibular technology is rapidly evolving to improve objective assessments of vestibular function. Understanding the reliability and expected score ranges of emerging clinical vestibular tools is important to gauge how these tools should be used as clinical endpoints.
The objective of this study was to evaluate inter-rater and test-retest reliability intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) of four vestibular tools and to determine expected ranges of scores through smallest real difference (SRD) measures.
Sixty healthy graduate students completed two 1-hour sessions, at most a week apart, consisting of two video head-impulse tests (vHIT), computerized dynamic visual acuity (cDVA) tests, and a smartphone-assisted bucket test (SA-SVV). Thirty students were tested by different testers at each session (inter-rater) and 30 by the same tester (test-retest). ICCs and SRDs were calculated for both conditions.
Most measures fell within the moderate ICC range (0.50-0.75). ICCs were higher for cDVA in the inter-rater subgroup and higher for vHITs in the test-retest subgroup.
Measures from the four tools evaluated were moderately reliable. There may be a tester effect on reliabilities, specifically vHITs. Further research should repeat these analyses in a patient population and explore methodological differences between vHIT systems.
临床前庭技术正在迅速发展，以改善前庭功能的客观评估。了解新兴临床前庭工具的可靠性和预期分数范围对于评估这些工具作为临床终点的应用方式非常重要。
本研究的目的是评估四种前庭工具的组内者间和重测信度的组内相关系数（ICC），并通过最小可察觉差（SRD）来确定预期分数范围。
60 名健康的研究生在最多相隔一周的两个 1 小时的时间段内完成了两次测试，包括两个视频头脉冲测试（vHIT）、计算机动态视力测试（cDVA）和智能手机辅助桶测试（SA-SVV）。在每个时间段，有 30 名学生由不同的测试者进行测试（组内者间），30 名学生由同一名测试者进行测试（组内重测）。对两种情况都计算了 ICC 和 SRD。
大多数指标都处于中等 ICC 范围（0.50-0.75）。在组内者间亚组中，cDVA 的 ICC 较高，而在组内重测亚组中，vHIT 的 ICC 较高。
评估的四种工具的测量值具有中等可靠性。可靠性可能存在测试者效应，特别是 vHIT。进一步的研究应该在患者群体中重复这些分析，并探讨 vHIT 系统之间的方法学差异。
