Translation and cross-cultural adaptation to Brazilian Portuguese of the Modified Tardieu Scale for muscle tone assessment among patients with spinal cord injury.

BACKGROUND

Assessment of muscle tone is of great importance for evaluating people with spinal injuries.

OBJECTIVE

To translate and adapt the Modified Tardieu Scale (MTS) to Brazilian Portuguese and validate its use for evaluating patients with spinal cord injury.

METHODS

The translation and adaptation of the "Escala de Tardieu Modificada" went through the steps of translation, translation synthesis, back-translation and expert committee meeting. Two evaluators rated the tone of the elbow flexors/extensors, wrist extensors, knee flexors/extensors and ankle plantar flexors of 51 patients with spinal cord injury. These patients were reevaluated after one week. Validation included intra and inter-rater reliability (ICC) and internal and external consistency. The Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS) was used in the evaluations, to investigate the correlations.

RESULTS

The Brazilian Portuguese version of the MTS is presented in this study. ICCs ranged from 0.60 to 0.99 (intra and inter-examiner) and there was a moderate to strong correlation with MAS.

CONCLUSIONS

The MTS proved to be adequate for assessing the muscle tone of people with spinal cord injury in Brazil.