PHYSIOTHERAPISTS' APPROACH REGARDING SPASTICITY MEASUREMENT SCALES IN PATIENTS WITH UPPER MOTOR NEURON SYNDROME

OBJECTIVE: To determine the physiotherapists' approach regarding spasticity measurement scales in patients with upper motor neuron syndrome. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted in different hospitals of Karachi from January 2018 to June 2018. One hundred physiotherapists with an interest in the neurological rehabilitation were enrolled using convenience-sampling technique. After taking written informed consent, a questionnaire comprising of close-ended questions was distributed among the participants. Extraction sheet was used to extract the recorded response; later was analyzed using SPSS v 21.0. RESULTS: Out of 100 physiotherapists, 90 responded (response rate of 90%), where 60 (66.6%) participants were males and 30 (33.3%) were female. Fifty-five (61.11%) participants responded that they use assessment scale of tone for shoulder complex, seven (7.78%) used biomechanical approaches, five (5.56%) used neurophysiological, three (3.33%) use both biomechanical as well as neurophysiological approach for the assessment of tone in shoulder complex and twenty (22.22%) did not use any measurement scale. Out of 55 participants using any assessment scale, twenty (36.4%) used Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS), while rest of thirty-five (63.6%) used three grade muscle tone scale with different combination: mild/moderate/severe by twenty (36.4%); flaccid/normal/spastic by five (9.1%), and +/++/+++ by ten (18.1%) participants. CONCLUSION: Majority of participants in this study use unreliable assessment tools for the assessment of tone in upper motor neuron syndrome. They need to be encouraged to use valid and reliable tools for assessment.