Content - Volume 27, Issue 3

The purpose of the present study was to assess five manual tests for pain provocation of the neck to determine their suitability for epidemiological investigations. To 75 randomly selected men, five manual pain-provoking tests were applied in a single-blind design. Prevalence of reported neck dysfunction, sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predicted value for each test were calcul ...

Grip strength is considered to be a good indicator of upper limb strength. The Jamar dynamometer and the Martin vigorimeter are two instruments frequently used to assess grip strength in clinical and research settings. The purpose of this study was to compare these instruments for assessing grip strength in 360 people aged 60 to 94 years, randomly selected from the electoral list. Anthropometric d ...

The Visual Analog Scale (VAS) can be used to record subjectively experienced pain in different situations (items). By a mathematical method, the Rasch analysis, the original VAS recordings can be converted to an interval scale. Forty women with Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome (PFPS) reported their pain on the VAS from 12 different situations (items) before and after 12 weeks of rehabilitation. The it ...

The aim of this paper was to study the physical performance, pain, pain behavior and disability in patients with subacute low back pain (LBP). The patients were blue-collar workers and had been sick-listed for 8 weeks due to subacute low back pain. A total of 103 patients were randomized, 51 of them to the intervention group and the other to a control group. Recordings of physical performance and ...

An intact afferent nervous system is important in providing the feedback necessary for effective motor control. Joint injury may influence afferent feedback and, if the lower limb is involved, lead to a decrease in stability. Accordingly, the association between severe ankle sprain and local sensory deficit was examined. Measurements of vibration perception, two point discrimination and balance in ...

The effect of afferent cutaneous electrical stimulation on the spasticity of leg muscles was studied in 20 patients with chronic hemiplegia after stroke. Stimulation electrodes were placed over the sural nerve of the affected limb. The standard method of cutaneous stimulation, TENS with impulse frequency of 100 Hz, was applied. The tonus of the leg muscles was measured by means of an electrohydrau ...

It is known that people who have suffered stroke walk slower than normal. However, their ability to deviate from a preferred speed of walking has not been reported. This study investigated the range of walking speeds of 20 hemiplegic subjects and compared the results with those of 20 normal age- and gender-matched controls. All subjects traversed a computerized grid walkway which measured selected ...

A cohort study with initial and 4-year follow-up evaluations was performed in 78 post-polio volunteers aged 34-65 years at the time of enrolment in the study, which was made to compare post-polio individuals living in Sweden and the United States, to determine whether lower limb musculature becomes weaker over time, and to determine whether individuals with complaints of post-polio syndrome, new w ...