Standing Balance, Lower Extremity Muscle Strength, and Walking Performance of Patients Referred for Physical Therapy

The purposes of this study of 30 patients referred to physical therapy were to describe the reliability of two measures of impairment and a measure of gait performance and to examine the relationships between the impairment and gait measures. The impairments measured were standing balance and muscle strength of the lower extremities, the former with a seven-level ordinal scale and the latter with a hand-held dynamometer. Gait performance was measured using the seven-category scale of the Functional Independence Measure. Interday reliability was acceptable for all three measures, standing balance (weighted Kappa = .95), muscle strength (intraclass correlation coefficients = .871 to .951), and gait (weighted Kappa = .915). A Spearman correlation of .860 was found between balance and gait measures. The correlations between the strengths of various muscle groups and gait were lower (.138 to .581). Multiple regression identified none of the strength scores as offering additional independent explanation of gait performance. Balance, as scored, appears to be a reliable and valid measure worth broader application among hospitalized patients.