Original articleMeasuring Upper Limb Capacity in Patients After Stroke: Reliability and Validity of the Stroke Upper Limb Capacity Scale
Section snippets
Participants
Twenty-one patients after stroke who were admitted to a stroke ward of a regional rehabilitation center within a period of 10 months were included. At this ward, typically patients with a good potential to regain functional independence within 4 months after stroke were admitted. They were provided with, on average, five 30-minute sessions of individual physical therapy, three 30-minute sessions of individual occupational therapy, and five to eight 60-minute group sessions of physical or
Participants
The characteristics of the participants of this study and those of the reference cohort as described by Roorda et al12 are summarized in table 1. No significant differences were found in demographic or clinical characteristics or in the SULCS scores between these groups.
Reliability
The 2 measurements of the SULCS by the different raters (at t2 and t3) are presented in figure 1. Median SULCS scores at t2 and t3 were both 6.0 (interquartile range [IQR], 2.0–9.5 and 2.0–8.5, respectively). The interrater
Discussion
In this study, we investigated the reliability and validity of the SULCS, a new measure to assess upper limb capacity in patients after stroke. The results indicated that the SULCS had good interrater reliability (ICC=.94), which is comparable with the interrater reliability of the ARAT (ICC=.95; ICC=.98)14, 24 and the RMA (ICC=.88),8 as established in previous studies. The results of this study also demonstrated good construct validity of the SULCS based on high cross-sectional correlations
Conclusions
The SULCS is a new unidimensional and hierarchical measure of upper limb capacity in patients with arm-hand paresis due to stroke that has good interrater reliability and construct validity. Its short administration time and sensitivity in patients with no hand capacity seems to render the SULCS suitable for both scientific and clinical purposes.
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2019, Archives of Physical Medicine and RehabilitationCitation Excerpt :A single therapist administered the FMA, BBT, SULCS, and AMAT, in that order, at weeks 0, 6, 12 (end of therapy), 20, 28, and 36 (6mo post-therapy). The SULCS consists of 10 tasks that relate to daily activities.1,3 Each receives a score of 0 (unable to perform) or 1 (able to perform), resulting in a total score of 0-10.
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2013, Archives of Physical Medicine and RehabilitationCitation Excerpt :Since the assessments were part of standard rehabilitative care, they were performed by approximately 15 occupational therapists over the 7-year inclusion period. The interrater reliability of the SULCS was excellent (intraclass correlation coefficient, .94).16 All occupational therapists received instructions and training on how to administer the SULCS, so that the test items were performed and scored uniformly.
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Supported in part by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, Overijssel, and Gelderland, under the project name “VirtuRob.”
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