Agreement of repeated motor and sensory scores at individual myotomes and dermatomes in young persons with spinal cord injury.

STUDY DESIGN: A prospective repeated measures multicenter study to determine reliability at individual spinal levels when applied to young persons with spinal cord injury (SCI). OBJECTIVES: To evaluate intra- and inter-rater agreement of repeated motor and sensory scores at individual spinal levels. SETTING: Shriners Hospitals for Children--Philadelphia and Chicago, USA. METHODS: A total 189 youth with complete and incomplete SCI underwent four neurological exams by two different raters. Agreement between and within raters for each myotome and dermatome was evaluated for complete and incomplete SCI separately. Intraclass correlation coefficients and 95% confidence intervals were calculated. RESULTS: Overall, both intra- and inter-rater agreement resulted in moderate-to-high agreement among myotomes. Subjects with complete SCI had moderate agreement for light touch (LT) and pin prick (PP) testing, whereas subjects with incomplete SCI had >60.0% of dermatomes resulting in poor agreement for PP testing. CONCLUSION: Overall, moderate-to-high agreement was found for muscle strength comparisons and moderate-to-poor agreement was found for PP and LT.