Short apraxia screening test.

BACKGROUND

Limb apraxia comprises many different and common disorders, which are largely unrecognized essentially because there is no easy-to-use screening test sensitive enough to identify all types of limb praxis deficits.

METHOD: We evaluated 70 right-handed patients with limb apraxia due to a single focal lesion of the left hemisphere and 40 normal controls, using a new apraxia screening test. The test covered 12 items including: intransitive gestures, transitive gestures elicited under verbal, visual, and tactile modalities, imitation of meaningful and meaningless postures and movements, and a multiple object test.

RESULTS

Interrater reliability was maximum for a cutoff of >2 positive items identifying apraxia on the short battery (Cohen's kappa .918, p < .0001), and somewhat less for >3 items (Cohen's kappa .768, p < .0001). Although both results were statistically significant, >2 was higher, indicating greater apraxia diagnosis agreement between raters at this cutoff value.

CONCLUSIONS

The screening test proved to have high specificity and sensitivity to diagnose every type of upper limb praxis deficit, thus showing advantages over previously published tests.