Discriminative, predictive and evaluative properties of the simplified stroke rehabilitation assessment of movement instrument in patients with stroke.

OBJECTIVE: To justify the utility of the Simplified Stroke Rehabilitation Assessment of Movement Instrument (S-STREAM), we examined the discriminative, predictive and evaluative properties of the 3 subscales of the S-STREAM (i.e. upper-limb movements, lower-limb movements and mobility) in patients after stroke. SUBJECTS: A total of 388 patients after stroke participated in this study. To examine the discriminative property, the patients were divided into 3 groups according to their Barthel Index scores. A comprehensive measure of activities of daily living was administered at 6 months after hospital discharge as an external criterion to examine the predictive property. Changes in the S-STREAM scores from the time of admission for rehabilitation, to hospital discharge, were used to examine the evaluative property. RESULTS: All pair-wise comparisons of mean scores among the 3 groups on the 3 subscales of the S-STREAM were significant. The scores of the S-STREAM showed moderate to good correlations with the comprehensive activities of daily living scores. There were large changes in the 3 subscales of the S-STREAM. CONCLUSION: All 3 subscales of the S-STREAM demonstrate good discriminative, predictive and evaluative properties in patients after stroke. These findings provide strong evidence that the S-STREAM is useful in measuring motor and mobility function in patients after stroke.