The Use of Dexterity Tests in Hand Rehabilitation

Abstract

A battery of American standardized tests for assessing dexterity was used in 15 patients undergoing rehabilitation after hand injuries and in 15 healthy controls. Our purpose was to identify tests that would discriminate healthy from non-healthy individuals with respect to functional motor skills in the hand. Out of the test battery including 4 tests and 10 subtests, the Crawford small parts dexterity test, the Purdue pegboard test, the Minnesota manual dexterity test and Valpar no. 4, two tests, the Crawford pin test and the Purdue right and left test, found to make a clear distinction between subjects with impaired hand function and those in the healthy group. The Purdue right/left/bilateral test, the Minnesota picking and turning tests, the Crawford screw test, the Purdue bilateral test and Valpar no. 4 also appeared useful, but had less capacity to discriminate between the two groups compared with the two tests already mentioned. We conclude that the tests presented in this study deserve a place in our current arsenal of instruments for evaluating dexterity, but a larger material is needed in order to make a more precise evaluation of these tests.

Key Words:

• evaluation
• dexterity tests
• functional capacity evaluation
• hand/upper extremity