Bimanual ability for brachial plexus birth injury: a validity and reliability study of the ABILHAND-Kids.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: ABILHAND-Kids is a structured parent report that assesses manual ability in activities of daily living in children with cerebral palsy, and also brachial plexus birth injury (BPBI). This study investigated the validity, test-retest reliability, and internal consistency of the ABILHAND-Kids in children with BPBI. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The ABILHAND-Kids was administered to parents of 119 children with BPBI between 6 and 15 years for validity and internal consistency, also 92 parents were re-interviewed after two weeks to establish test-retest reliability. Its concurrent validity was examined by correlating scores on the ABILHAND-Kids with Active Movement Scale-Total Score. RESULTS: ABILHAND-Kids were strongly correlated with AMS-Total score (p < 0.001, r = 0.87) ABILHAND-Kids test-retest reliability was excellent (ICC 0.93, %95 CI 0.90-0.95). The internal consistency for the total score of ABILHAND-Kids was excellent (alpha = 0.94). For 20 items, item-total correlations were adequate (corrected item-total correlations, 0.27-0.85), one item which was "switching on a bedside lamb" had no adequate correlation (corrected item-total correlations, 0.011). The ABILHAND-Kids score showed a statistically significant difference between the Narakas types (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The ABILHAND-Kids has excellent reliability and strong validity for measuring manual ability or bimanual performance in activities of daily living in children with BPBI.

ABILHAND-Kids is a valuable tool for assessing bimanual activities in children with Brachial Plexus Birth Injury.ABILHAND-Kids is valid in both concurrent and discriminative validity in children with Brachial Plexus Birth Injury.ABILHAND-Kids is reliable in children with Brachial Plexus Birth Injury.ABILHAND-Kids assesses bimanual performance in real-life activities and offers valuable insights for treatment planning in Brachial Plexus Birth Injury.