Manual muscle testing

✍ Scribed by Dr. Jerry R. Mendell; Julaine Florence

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1990
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 439 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0148-639X
• DOI: 10.1002/mus.880131307

✦ Synopsis

About 14 years ago, I was fortunate to be recruited by Dr. Michael Brooke to join a group of clinicians with the aim of developing a protocol to define the natural history of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).' Why was this important? So many studies dating back several decades had given false hopes about therapeutic trials in DMD. If a natural history data base was established, therapeutic trials of appropriate duration and sample size for a given therapeutic result could be designed.

One important goal of the protocol we were developing was to incorporate a reliable method to assess muscle strength. Manual muscle testing (MMT) based on a modification of the Medical Research Council (MRC) was chosen because it is easily adapted to a multiclinic setting. Quantitative muscle testing (QMT) methods were, at that time, very much in their infancy and they had not been used to any extent in children. This lack of experience in using Q M T in children is still very much the case today. Disadvantages of the MRC scale, especially in the category designated as grade 4

From the Neuromuscular Division, Ohio State Medical Center, Columbus, Ohio (Dr. Mendell