title: Short apraxia screening test.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Limb apraxia comprises many different and common disorders, which are largely unrecognized essentially because there is no easy-to-use screening test sensitive enough to identify all types of limb praxis deficits.
  
  
  METHODS
  We evaluated 70 right-handed patients with limb apraxia due to a single focal lesion of the left hemisphere and 40 normal controls, using a new apraxia screening test. The test covered 12 items including: intransitive gestures, transitive gestures elicited under verbal, visual, and tactile modalities, imitation of meaningful and meaningless postures and movements, and a multiple object test.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Interrater reliability was maximum for a cutoff of >2 positive items identifying apraxia on the short battery (Cohen's kappa .918, p < .0001), and somewhat less for >3 items (Cohen's kappa .768, p < .0001). Although both results were statistically significant, >2 was higher, indicating greater apraxia diagnosis agreement between raters at this cutoff value.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The screening test proved to have high specificity and sensitivity to diagnose every type of upper limb praxis deficit, thus showing advantages over previously published tests.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Cognitive Neurology and Neuropsychiatry , Institute of Neurological Research, Fundacion de Lucha contra las Enfermedades Neurológicas de la Infancia (FLENI) , Buenos Aires , Argentina.
authors.forename: Ramon
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Leiguarda
authors.forename: Florencia
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Clarens
authors.forename: Alejandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Amengual
authors.forename: Lucas
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Drucaroff
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hallett
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D001072:Apraxias / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods*; D009068:Movement; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011187:Posture; D011446:Prospective Studies; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D012372:ROC Curve; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012720:Severity of Illness Index
keywords: Apraxia evaluation; Screening test; Sensitivity; Specificity