Reliability of clinical measurements obtained with Modified Ashworth Scale in Chinese patients with spasticity

Objective:To test the reliability of clinical measurements obtained with Modified Ashworth Scale in Chinese patients with spasticity. Method: Twenty -three patients including 16 hemiplegic patients, 5 paraplegic patients and 2 tetraplegic patients, with increasing muscle tone were recruited for this study. Two doctors assessed the muscle tone of elbow flexor, wrist flexor and quadriceps femoris using Modified Ashworth Scale in hemiplegic and tetraplegic patients, whereas assessed only quadriceps femoris in paraplegic patients. The Kendall′ s tau -b coefficient was calculated to evaluate the inter-rater and intra-rater reliabilities. Result: Interrater and intrarater reliabilities of elbow flexor, wrist flexor and quadriceps femoris were good as indicated by Kendall′ s tau -b coefficients ranging from 0.621 to 0.862, the agreements between two raters and within one rater were high also. Conclusion: The Modified Ashworth Scale is reliable for the assessment of spasticity, and is valuable for clinical measurements in China.