Assessment of the Spastic Upper Limb with Computational Motion Analysis

This article presents the current status of integrating 3-dimensional motion analysis and electromyography to assess upper extremity function clinically. The authors used their approach to establish a normative database for 5 Shriners Hospital Upper Extremity Evaluation tasks, which provides ranges of motion at the point of task achievement. Also, the inter-joint correlations are provided to understand the movement coordination required for each task. Distal upper extremity motion is strongly related to proximal function, supporting the idea that treatment of the proximal upper extremity deficits may be best preceded by treatment of the more distal upper extremity segments.