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Relationships Among Selected Measures of Impairment, Functional Limitation, and Disability in Patients With Cervical Spine Disorders

KM Hermann, PT, PhD, is Director, The Therapy Center, College Station Medical Center, 1605 Rock Praire Rd, Ste 5, College Station, TX 77845 (USA) (hermannkarl{at}hotmail.com).
CS Reese, PhD, is Technical Staff Member, Statistical Sciences, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM. Dr Reese was a doctoral candidate in the Department of Statistics, Texas A&M University, College Station, Tex, at the time of the study

Address all correspondence to Dr Hermann

Background and Purpose. Little is known about the relationship among impairments, functional limitations, and disability in people with cervical spine disorders (CSD) despite the fact that these concepts are routinely used in clinical practice. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among commonly assessed impairment, functional limitation, and disability measures in patients with CSD. A secondary purpose was to determine the influence of payment source and time since onset of symptoms on these same measures. Subjects. Eighty patients (mean age=45.7 years, SD=15.9, range= 20–88) with CSD who were referred for physical therapy participated in the study. Methods. Data were obtained for 3 measures of impairment, 2 measures of functional limitation, and 3 measures of self-reported disability during the initial visit. Results. All 3 sets of variables (ie, impairment, functional limitation, disability) correlated with each other, with the highest correlation occurring between the impairment measures and the functional limitation measures (r=.82). Other correlations were noted between individual variables. There was no effect of payment type or time since onset of symptoms on the variables. Conclusion and Discussion. Positive correlations were noted among the 3 sets of measures, which supports the assumption that impairments, functional limitations, and disability are related in patients with CSD.

Key Words: Cervical spine • Neck pain • Physical examination