Abstract

Background: the complexity of the sacroiliac joint makes it evaluation very difficult, diagnostic test being very useful for the examination, so it is believed desirable to check its reliability. Objective: to test the reliability of Downing test. Material and method: we conducted a concordance and reliability study with 40 participants (22 women). The study was done in CEU University of Madrid since january to june 2013. In this work we included asymptomatic subjects between the ages of 18 to 55 years and we excluded subjects with low back pain or other pathologies. The interexaminers did the Downing test successively in each subject leaving an interval of 60 minutes between each one. Results: the results showed a Kappa index k = 0.258 (95 % CI: 0.01- 0.45) for the right hip bone and k = 0.226 (95 % CI: 0.01- 0.42) for the left hip bone. Conclusion: according to the results in our study the Downing test has a weak reliability, so it is not considered valid as a diagnostic complement to the sacroiliac joint.