Inter- and intraobserver reliability assessment of the axial trunk rotation: manual versus smartphone-aided measurement tools

BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders

Yong Qiu¹  Bangping Qian¹  Zhen Liu¹  Feng Zhu¹  Zezhang Zhu¹  Leilei Xu¹  Jun Qiao¹ 

[1] Spine Surgery, Drum Tower Hospital, Nanjing University Medical School, 321 Zhongshan Road, Nanjing, China

关键词: Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis;    Axial trunk rotation;    Smartphone-aided measurement;    Reliability;   

Others  :  1118666
DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2474-15-343

 received in 2014-02-14, accepted in 2014-10-03,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

Scoliogauge, has been developed for the measurement of ATR on iPhone smartphones. This study was to evaluate the reliability for the smartphone-aided ATR measurement method and to compare its reliability with that of the manual method.

Methods

Sixty-four AIS patients with single thoracic or lumbar curve participated in this study. Of these patients, thirty-two patients had main thoracic scoliosis while other thirty-two had main thoracolumbar/lumbar scoliosis. Two spine surgeons performed the measurements with Scoliometer and Scoliogauge. The Scoliogauge measurements were conducted on an iPhone 4 smartphone. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) 2-way mixed model on absolute agreement was used to analyze the reliability categorized according to regions: thoracic or lumbar, and Cobb angles: <20 degrees and >40 degrees. ICC < 0.40 is considered as poor, 0.40–0.59 as fair, 0.60–0.74 as good, and 0.75–1.00 as excellent.

Results

The overall intraobserver variability was 0.954 and the overall interobserver variability was 0.943 for the scoliometer set, whereas the intraobserver variability was 0.965 and interobserver variability was 0.964 for the scoliogauge set. Both the intraobserver and interobserver ICCs reached the excellent value in the 2 sets for both observers. The mean Cobb angle of thoracic curves in patients with main thoracic scoliosis was similar to that of lumbar curves in those with main thoracolumbar/lumbar scoliosis (35.7 degrees vs. 36.1 degrees). The intraobserver and interobserver reliability was similar between two groups (thoracic vs. lumbar) in the 2 sets. There were 21 patients having Cobb angles < 20 degrees, while 20 patients >40 degrees. The intraobserver and interobserver reliability was better in severe curve(>40 degrees) group.

Conclusion

Smartphone-aided measurement for ATR showed excellent reliability, and the reliability of measurement with either scoliometer or scoliogauge could be influenced by Cobb angle that reliability was better for curves with larger Cobb angles.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Qiao et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

Figure 1.

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