EVALUATION OF CUTANEOUS AND PROPRIOCEPTIVE SENSATION IN CHILDREN - A RELIABILTY STUDY

Forty-three healthy children aged between six and 12 years were tested to determine the intra-rater reliability of four clinical cutaneous a nd proprioceptive sensory assessment tools: touch pressure, vibration perception, thermal discrimination and kinaesthesis. The tests were ca rried out bilaterally on proximal and distal upper- and lower- extremi ty sites. The mean intraclass coefficients represented good to excelle nt reliability, which suggests that these assessment tools allow objec tive and reproducible measurements of cutaneous and proprioceptive sen sation in children. The results were compared with existing data in th e literature: in general, children and adults obtain similar sensory s cores, and sex, age and laterality have no significant effect on the r esults for any test. However, the touch-pressure and vibration scores were significantly influenced by the site tested, the index fingerpad being the most sensitive area in both tests.