Abstract

Introduction: mechanosensitivity of the nervous system can be tested by the neurodynamic tests in clinical practice. The use of these tests is becoming increasingly common and it is necessary to be aware of their diagnostic capacity in order to be able to make a follow up of the patient’s symptoms and also to promote interprofessional understanding. Objective: to assess inter- and intraexaminer reliability of the median neurodynamic test in asymptomatic subjects without external fixation devices for range of motion (ROM) and symptom localization variables. Material and method: a reliability study was carried out. 49 subjects (69.4 % female and 30.6 % male), aged between 19 and 40 years, with no systemic disease nor neck or upper limb pain were included. Two examiners performed alternately the neurodynamic test with a 10 minutes break between measurements. The test was stopped at the onset of symptoms and structural differentiation was performed. A third examiner recorded the elbow extension range with an electronic uniaxial goniometer and the area where the patient referred symptoms. Results: in the range of elbow extension almost perfect intraexaminer (ICC1 = 0.845, SEM1 = 3.78; and ICC2 = 0.814, SEM2 = 4.12) and significant interexaminer (ICC = 0.631, SEM = 5.47) reliability was obtained. For the location of symptoms substantial intraexaminer reliability was obtained (K = 0.66 to 0.75) for the most frequent symptoms’ location regions (forearm and distal region innervated by the median nerve) and the interexaminer reliability ranged from substantial to moderate (K = 0.586 – 0.745). Conclusion: the study shows that there is intra- and interexaminer reliability within a single session in the performance of the median nerve neurodynamic test without external fixation devices in asymptomatic subjects