Inter-examiner reliability of diplomats in the mechanical diagnosis and therapy system in assessing patients with shoulder pain.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the inter-examiner reliability of Mechanical Diagnosis and Therapy (MDT)-trained diplomats in classifying patients with shoulder disorders. The MDT system has demonstrated acceptable reliability when used in patients with spinal disorders; however, little is known about its utility when used for appendicular conditions.


METHODS
Fifty-four clinical scenarios were created by a group of 11 MDT diploma holders based on their clinical experience with patients with shoulder pain. The vignettes were made anonymous, and their clinical diagnoses sections were left blank. The vignettes were sent to a second group of six international McKenzie Institute diploma holders who were asked to classify each vignette according to the MDT categories for upper extremity. Inter-examiner agreement was evaluated with kappa statistics.


RESULTS
There was 'very good' agreement among the six MDT diplomats for classifying the McKenzie syndromes in patients with shoulder pain (kappa = 0.90, SE = 0.018). The raw overall level of multi-rater agreement among the six clinicians in classifying the vignettes was 96%. After accounting for the actual MDT category for each vignette, kappa and the raw overall level of agreement decreased negligibly (0.89 and 95%, respectively).


CONCLUSIONS
Using clinical vignettes, the McKenzie system of MDT has very good reliability in classifying patients with shoulder pain. As an alternative, future reliability studies could use real patients instead of written vignettes.
School of Physical Therapy, Western University, London, Canada.
Afshin Heidar
AH
Abady
London Health Sciences Centre, London, Canada.
Richard
R
Rosedale
School of Physical Therapy, Western University, London, Canada.
Tom J
TJ
Overend
School of Physical Therapy, Western University, London, Canada ; Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University, London, Canada.
Bert M
BM
Chesworth
School of Kinesiology and Health Sciences, York University, Toronto, Canada.
Michael A
MA
Rotondi
Clinical vignette; Inter-examiner reliability; McKenzie; Mechanical diagnosis and therapy; Shoulder