Finger Tapping as an outcome measure to assess upper limb dysfunction in Multiple Sclerosis: a pilot study on feasibility and psychometric properties

Abstract

Finger Tapping as an outcome measure to assess upper limb dysfunction in Multiple Sclerosis:a pilot-study on feasibility and psychometric properties o.l.v. Prof. Dr. B. Van Wijmeersch, promotor Prof. Dr. P. Feys, co-promotor m.m.v.Dra. I. Lamers, co-promotor FT is an easy and well tolerated assessment tool which can discriminate between PwMS and healthy controls on the base of the amount of taps, inter-tap interval and touch duration. Good intra-session reliability for the latter FT parameters was found. However, moderate between-session reliability of the FT task was investigated in this study. The amount of taps, inter-tap interval and touch duration correlated well with the upper limb outcome measures on the 'body functions and structures' level and 'activity' level of the ICF. Based on the results obtained by this pilot study we can highlight that further research needs to be conducted on a larger sample size to obtain more powerful analysis considering reliability and validity.