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3
MOTION PALPATION
MISCONCEPTIONS
Introduction
Spinal motion palpation is an integral diagnostic procedure that has been widely used by manual therapy practitioners to diagnose spinal dysfunction. It is frequently used to locate primary areas of joint restriction, asymmetries in spinal level and intersegmental hypomobility and hypermobility. It helps determine whether a patient needs spinal manipulation, and, if so, where to apply the thrust (Bergmann and Peterson 2010). Motion palpation is also performed to detect functional changes in other regions (e.g., shoulder or hip) related to the spine. In addition, a recent study among physiotherapists in Australia reported that around 98 per cent of the respondents were using manual palpatory tests to take treatment decisions (Abbott et al. 2009).
Over the last century, various palpatory techniques have been developed to detect different degrees of motion restriction at the spinal level. However, the clinical utility of these palpation techniques in the assessment of spinal dysfunction has been controversial (Walker et al. 2015). Although proponents of manual therapy consider it to be a valid and reliable indicator of spinal abnormalities, a majority of studies have found it to be unreliable due to low indices of agreement (Cooperstein and Young 2016; Haneline et al. 2008; Huijbregts 2002; Walker et al. 2015). Because the reliability of an examination tool is a prerequisite for its clinical utility, the use of motion palpation to guide treatment interventions is questionable.
This chapter is therefore written to improve our understanding concerning the validity and reliability of spinal motion palpation.
Intrarater and interrater reliability of motion palpation
In the context of spinal motion palpation, reliability refers to the degree of consistency in the diagnostic outcomes when it is repeated under identical conditions. Intrarater reliability is the degree of agreement obtained by the same rater across two or more trials using the same procedure. Interrater reliability is the relative consistency of agreement among two or more raters concerning the outcomes of the same procedure (Watkins and Portney 2009).
Over the past decades, a large body of research has been conducted to determine the reliability of motion palpation. However, the reliability estimates have been reported to vary widely from study to study (Walker et al. 2015). The literature investigating the intrarater reliability using κ values suggested the degree of agreement to be moderate. On the other hand, the interrater reliability of motion palpation has been found to be poor, often the agreement at near chance levels (Haneline et al. 2008). Huijbregts (2002) proposed that this higher intra- than interrater reliability might be due to incorrect detection of the vertebral level by the raters at which motion restriction was identified. Nyberg and Russell Smith (2013) stated that a therapist’s primary focus during motion palpation might also be responsible for the low level of agreement between raters. They suggested that some therapists might solely concentrate on the degree of spinal displacement while others might be more focused on assessing the velocity of the displacement.
Systematic