Feasibility of a new concept for measuring actual functional performance in daily life of transfemoral amputees.
Selecting the correct prosthetics for a patient is critical and complex. Many of the measurements used to define the effect of the different joints focus purely on physiological or biomechanical outcomes. This approach ignores the amputees' perspective of the limb's usefulness for daily activities. Tests that do take this into account are generally highly subjective.
The Assessment of Daily Activity Performance in Transfemoral Amputees (ADAPT) test was evaluated for its feasiblity. 18 activities of daily living, including supermarket shopping, were tested by mechanical knee users and microprocessor knee (MPK) users.
The first nine tasks were completed in the first study, MPK users were shown to complete tasks faster, this shows the measurement scale to be sensative to different prosthetic components. The second study looked at tasks 10-18 and repeated the tasks twice, showing that it would be advisable to give participants time to become aquainted with circumstances of the tests before performing the tasks.
Additionally the more commonly used Locomotor Capabilities Index demonstrates a ceiling effect with more than 70% of participants gaining a score of 100%, this is not present in ADAPT results. The ADAPT could therefore be used to help justify the prescription of specific prosthetics to specific patients > From Theeven et al., J Rehabil Med 42 (2010) 744-751. All rights reserved to The Author.
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