Validity and Reliability of Myotonometry for Assessing Muscle Viscoelastic Properties in Patients with Stroke: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Overview

Journal Sci Rep

Specialty Science

Date 2021 Mar 4

PMID 33658623

Citations 19

Authors

Maria-Isabel Garcia-Bernal

Alberto Marcos Heredia-Rizo

Paula Gonzalez-Garcia

Maria-Dolores Cortes-Vega

Maria Jesus Casuso-Holgado

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

There is a lack of consensus about the measurement of the muscle viscoelastic features in stroke patients. Additionally, the psychometric properties of the most-commonly used clinical tools remain controversial. Our objective is to investigate the validity and reliability of myotonometry to assess viscoelastic muscle features in stroke survivors. Pubmed, PEDro, Scopus and Cinahl were systematically searched to include studies reporting the psychometric properties of myotonometric devices used in people after stroke. The QUADAS-2 and the COSMIN checklists were used to assess the methodological quality of the studies and the psychometric properties of myotonometry. Nine studies were included in the qualitative synthesis and data from five of these were pooled in a meta-analysis. Overall, low to moderate risk of bias and applicability concerns were observed. Pooled data from intra-rater reliability for muscle tone showed a mean coefficient of correlation of 0.915 (95% CI: 0.880-0.940, I 2 = 69.2%) for upper limbs, and a mean coefficient of 0.785 (95%CI: 0.708-0.844, I 2 = 4.02%) for lower limbs. Myotonometry seems to be a valid and reliable complementary tool to assess muscle viscoelastic properties in stroke survivors, although definite conclusions about concurrent validity need further research.

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