Validity and reliability of balance Y-MED application in chronic mechanical low back pain patients

Abstract

BackgroundLow back pain patients suffer from balance disturbance. Balance allows a person to interact with the surrounding environment and to do his daily activities. As recent technology has facilitated patient monitoring and enhanced our ability to monitor patients remotely, smartphone apps have been developed to achieve this goal. There are various balance assessment instruments used nowadays. It may be subjective or objective assessments. This study was applied to verify if the measurements of balance Y-MED smartphone applications are valid and reliable compared to the HUMAC balance board in order to offer easy, fast, cost-effective, and time-effective valid and reliable balance assessment that can be used in a clinical setting.MethodsFifty-four patients (12 males and 42 females) with chronic mechanical low back pain for more than 3 months was volunteered to participate in the current study with an age range of 25–60 years and BMI range of 18–34 kg/m2. Compared with the HUMAC balance board, the validity of the balance Y-MED smartphone application is evaluated, and the test-retest reliability of the balance Y-MED smartphone application is obtained by the same examiner 3 times.ResultsFor concurrent validity, the correlations between balance measurements by Y-MED smartphone application and HUMAC balance board were not significant in both eyes open (r = − 0.12, p = 0.38) and eyes closed (r = 0.26, p = 0.054). The smartphone application showed poor test-retest reliability measurement of balance with eyes open; (ICC was 0.279, with 95% CI − 0.117–0.554) and with eyes closed (ICC was − 0.159, with 95% CI − 0.814–0.287).ConclusionsAccording to the evaluation scheme selected in this study, the researchers were unable to confirm the validity of the balance Y-MED smartphone application in the balance assessment of patients with mechanical chronic low back pain. More than that, the balance Y-MED smartphone application has been shown poor score reliability. This makes it inaccurate for use in assessment balance.