The relationship of median nerve F-wave parameters with severity and subtypes of carpal tunnel syndrome1

Abstract

Results support the differing effects of demyelinating and axonal injury on F-waves and suggest that the mF/M-amp ratio and FwCV, which is influenced by neuronal damages in the distal segment of the median nerve, is useful in the discrimination of CTS severity.

The translation, validity and reliability of the German version of the Fremantle Back Awareness Questionnaire

“…In addition, a sample of 48 healthy participants, recruited from staff and students (lower age limit: 18 years) at the University of Applied Health Sciences in Bochum, Germany were recruited. According to the original FreBAQ protocol by Wand et al [ 26 ] healthy participants had to meet the following criteria: currently back pain free, no episode of back pain within the last two years restricting them from work or leisure activities, sufficient cognitive and German language ability to understand both oral and written instructions, provide feedback and informed consent. Exclusion criteria were pregnancy or less than 6 months post-partum or significant spinal deformities.…”

“…Within the data analysis a FreBAQ-G item which was not answered was categorised as ‘not endorsed’, in keeping with Wand et al [ 26 ] and scored as zero, representing “never feels like this”. All analyses were conducted using SPSS, version 24 (IBM, Armok, USA) or Microsoft Excel 2010, version 14 (Microsoft, Redmond, USA).…”

“…The within-subjects SD was then used within a statistical power calculation to estimate whether the random measurement error identified in this study was small enough to detect a clinically relevant change in FreBAQ scores with a feasible sample size. As no MCID for the FreBAQ exists a value of 10 was chosen as the MCID within the power calculation based upon previous data quantifying the difference in FreBAQ between people with back pain and healthy controls [ 26 ]. ICC 3.1 scores of <0.75 were considered to demonstrate poor reliability, 0.75–0.89 moderate and ≥0.90 excellent reliability [ 43 ].…”

“…The Freemantle Back Awareness Questionnaire (FreBAQ) is a simple tool that claims to assess back-specific altered body perception [ 25 ]. It comprises 9 items with a five-point Likert scale attempting to investigate neglect-associated features, proprioceptive acuity, and a person’s perceived body image [ 26 , 27 ].…”

“…In people with CLBP, the FreBAQ has been associated with a number of clinical characteristics such as pain duration (Pearson correlation ρ = 0.357, p = 0.01) and pain intensity (Spearman’s rho = 0.40, p = 0.004) [ 26 ] though others have found no such relationship [ 28 ]. As a measure of body perception it has demonstrated evidence for known-groups validity (median difference between healthy controls and people with CLBP = 11, Mann-Whitney test, p< 0.001) and reliability (ICC2,1 agreement = 0.652 (95% CI: 0.307 to 0.848),ICC2,1 consistency = 0.667 (95% CI: 0.317 to 0.857) [ 26 ] but did not provide evidence of convergent validity with other body perception measures in a different pain population [ 29 ]. The FreBAQ was recently translated and validated into Japanese (FreBAQ-J) [ 27 ] and Dutch [ 28 ].…”