Abstract
Acquired brain injury (ABI) is the third leading cause of death in Spain. The disability derived from ABI can include considerable difficulties in upper-limb use due to somatosensory deficits. One of the assessments most commonly used to evaluate ABI is the Nottingham Sensory Assessment (NSA); however, there is no complete psychometric analysis or standardized version in Spanish. We aimed to develop and validate a Spanish version of the stereognosis component of the NSA for evaluating Spanish adults with ABI via a single-center, observational, cross-sectional study. The Spanish version of the NSA was developed in two steps. The first was based on the standardization and collection of normative data in 120 asymptomatic participants. For the second, we recruited 25 participants with ABI to establish concurrent criterion-related validity, internal consistency, and floor/ceiling effects. Criterion validity was assessed against two-point discrimination and tactile-localization tests. Our normative data showed significant differences among the various age groups (p < 0.05), supporting the validity of the Spanish-version assessment. For the ABI sample, we also found further evidence of validity with Spearman’s rho coefficient between the total scores and the two-point discrimination and tactile-localization tests, which showed low and moderate correlations (rho = 0.50–0.75, p < 0.05). Internal consistency was excellent, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.91. No ceiling or floor effects were found. We conclude that the stereognosis component of the NSA in its Spanish version is a valid scale that can be used to comprehensively and accurately assess stereognosis capacity in adults with ABI. As a low-cost evaluation, this assessment has great potential to be widely used in clinical practice and research settings.
Highlights
Acquired brain injury (ABI) is an isolated disease determined, in 78% of cases, by either external causes or internal causes, among which strokes are the most frequent [1]
The current tendency to use superficial assessments with poorly structured protocols and questionable reproducibility could be problematic. In this project, we aimed to culturally adapt and validate the stereognosis subscale of the Nottingham Sensory Assessment (NSA) tool in a Spanish population diagnosed with ABI
A total of 120 participants were included in our pilot study of normative-data collection, in which significant differences (p < 0.05) were obtained among the various age groups for the total score obtained in the stereognosis subtest (Table 1)
Summary
Acquired brain injury (ABI) is an isolated disease determined, in 78% of cases, by either external causes (such as cranioencephalic trauma) or internal causes, among which strokes are the most frequent [1]. When a brain injury occurs, it is accompanied by a series of limitations, which can be disabling. These limitations include a variety of motor, perceptual, sensory, language, psychological, and behavioral deficits [2]. The disability presented represents up to 60% of difficulties in the use of the affected upper limb (UL) [4,5,6]. These difficulties in the UL can be multiple and varied, with 55% of the population having somatosensory deficits from the onset of the disease [7]
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