Stroke Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Stroke, including details on treatment, recovery, rehabilitation, signs, symptoms.

Validity of accelerometry for monitoring real-world arm activity in patients with subacute stroke: evidence from the extremity constraint-induced therapy evaluation trial.

Uswatte G, Giuliani C, Winstein C, Zeringue A, Hobbs L, Wolf SL

Department of Psychology, University of Alabama, Birmingham, AL 35294, USA. guswatte@uab.edu

OBJECTIVE: To examine the psychometric properties of an objective method for assessing real-world arm activity in a large sample with subacute stroke. DESIGN: Validation study. SETTING: Community. PARTICIPANTS: Persons 3 to 9 months poststroke (N=169) with mild to moderate motor impairment of their hemiparetic arm enrolled in a multisite, randomized clinical trial of constraint-induced movement therapy. INTERVENTIONS: Not applicable. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Participants wore an accelerometer on each arm outside the laboratory for 3 days before and after treatment or an equivalent no-treatment period. They also completed the Actual Amount of Use Test (AAUT), which is an observational measure of spontaneous more-impaired arm use, and the Motor Activity Log (MAL), which is an interview assessing more-impaired arm use in daily life. RESULTS: Low-pass-filtered accelerometer recordings were reliable (r range, >.8) and stable (P range, >.48). Their validity was also supported. Correlations calculated across all participants at baseline between the ratio of more-impaired to less-impaired arm accelerometer recordings and AAUT and MAL scores were .60 and .52, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Accelerometry provides an objective, real-world index of more-impaired arm activity with good psychometric properties.

Published 6 October 2006 in Arch Phys Med Rehabil, 87(10): 1340-5.
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