1. Tandem Gait Test-Retest Reliability Among Healthy Child and Adolescent Athletes.
- Author
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Howell, David R., Brilliant, Anna N., and Meehan III, William P.
- Subjects
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SPORTS injury prevention , *ATHLETES , *BRAIN concussion , *COGNITIVE testing , *CONFIDENCE intervals , *STATISTICAL correlation , *DIAGNOSIS , *POSTURAL balance , *GAIT in humans , *HEALTH facilities , *LABORATORIES , *LONGITUDINAL method , *NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL tests , *RESEARCH methodology , *STATISTICS , *TIME , *DATA analysis , *STATISTICAL reliability , *TASK performance , *REPEATED measures design , *DATA analysis software , *DESCRIPTIVE statistics , *INTRACLASS correlation , *CHILDREN - Abstract
Context: The tandem gait test is a method for assessing dynamic postural control and part of the Sport Concussion Assessment Tool, versions 3 and 5. However, its reliability among child and adolescent athletes has yet to be established. Objective: To examine the test-retest reliability of the single-task and dual-task tandem gait test among healthy child and adolescent athletes. Design: Descriptive laboratory study. Setting: Sports injury-prevention center. Patients or Other Participants: Uninjured and healthy athletes between the ages of 9 and 18 years. Intervention(s): Tandem gait measures repeated 3 times across the period of approximately 1 month. Main Outcome Measure(s): Participants completed the tandem gait test under single-task and dual-task (ie, while simultaneously executing a cognitive task) conditions. Our primary outcome measure was completion time during the single-task and dual-task conditions. We also assessed cognitive accuracy and response rate while participants completed the dual-task tandem gait test. Results: Thirty-two child and adolescent athletes completed the study (mean age = 14.3 ± 2.4 years; females = 16). Single- task tandem gait times were similar across the 3 testing sessions (14.4 ± 4.8, 13.5 ± 4.2, and 13.8 ± 4.8 seconds; P = .45). Dual-task tandem gait times steadily improved across the test timeline (18.6 ± 6.9, 16.6 ± 4.5, and 15.8 ± 4.7 seconds; P = .02). Bivariate correlations indicated moderately high to high agreement from test 1 to test 2 (single-task r= .627; dual-task r= 0.655) and from test 2 to test 3 (single-task r = 0.852; dual-task r = 0.775). Both the single-task (intraclass correlation coefficient; ICC [3,1] = 0.86; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.73, 0.93) and dual-task (ICC [3,1] = 0.84; 95% CI = 0.69, 0.92) conditions demonstrated high reliability across testing sessions. Conclusions: Tandem gait outcome measures demonstrat¬ed high test-retest reliability in both the single- and dual-task conditions. The overall reliability was within the acceptable range for clinical practice, but improvements across tests suggested a moderate practice effect. Tandem gait represents a reliable, dynamic, postural-control test that requires minimal space, cost, and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2019
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