Validity of clinical assessment measures of static foot posture in children / Emad Abdelmaboud Mahmoud Elsayed Aboelnasr ; Supervised Hoda Abdelazim Eltalawy , Faten Hassan Abdelazim

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Physical Therapy - Department of Growth and Development Disorders in Pediatrics

Background : Although reliability of clinical measures of static foot posture has been widely debated, validity of these measures has not been fully established especially in paediatric population. Clinicians are in need for a valid, accurate, easily used, noninvasive, safe and cost effective measure to evaluate static foot posture clinically. Objectives: To investigate validity and diagnostic accuracy of three clinical measures of static foot posture (foot posture index-6, Clarke{u2019}s angle, Normalized truncated navicular height) in children and adolescents using radiographic measures as the gold standard measure. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study had been conducted on a sample of 612 participants aged 6-18 years (12.36 ±3.39). Clinical assessment of static foot posture using Clarke{u2019}s angle, foot posture index-6 and normalized truncated navicular height was compared to the gold standard radiographic measures and displayed on the receiver operating characteristics curve. Intra-rater reliability was investigated using intraclass correlation coefficient. Sensitivity, specificity, predictive values, likelihood ratios were calculated for the studied clinical measures. Results: Clarke{u2019}s angle demonstrated the highest intra-rater reliability (ICC=0.99), followed by NTNH (ICC= 0.97) and FPI-6(ICC=0.96). CA was the most sensitive (98.4%) and specific (98.8%) measure and demonstrated the highest positive predictive value (97.3), negative predictive value (99.3), positive likelihood ratio (84) and the lowest negative likelihood ration (0.02) among the studied clinical measures

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