P-2-12-01
THE FAM-SPLAT - GRAPHIC PRESENTATION OF FIM and FAM DATA AT A GLANCE
Kyaw Nyien, Pat Salt, Lynne Turner-Stokes. Regional Rehabilitation Unit, Northwick Park Hospital, UK
The Functional Independence Measure (FIM) and Functional Assessment Measure (FAM) are global scores of independence which are widely used as outcome measures for rehabilitation. Graphic presentation of data may be useful in correspondence such as discharge summaries, or as an aid to discussion in case conferences, but is often time-consuming to produce or hard for clinicians to interpret. The aim of this development study was to produce graphic representation of FIM and FAM data at the touch of a button, which is easy to interpret and runs on standard software.
Methods: A multi-disciplinary panel was set up to represent a wide range of rehabilitation professionals. They were presented with a series of FAM data in a range of alternative graphic formats and asked to indicate which they found the easiest to interpret at a glance. They were also asked which standard software packages were available in their departments.
Results: The most popular format was a spider chart with change of level from admission to discharge indicated by shading the area between two solid lines, and the goal for discharge indicated by a dotted line. The most widely available software package to create this was Microsoft Excel.
Conclusion: Using a series of macros written in visual basic, a program has been developed to facilitate easy and reliable entry of FIM and or FAM data, and to produce a spider chart at the touch of a button.
P-2-12-02
PRINCIPAL COMPONENT ANALYSIS APPLIED TO ADL EVALUATION OF AMBULATION AND TRANSFER
Kazuhiko Shimizu, Chiemi Tashiro, Shinobu Shimizu, Hideo Miyahara (Kitasato University, Kanagawa, Japan)
The purpose of this study is to determine the rank of the ADL (activities of daily living) tests and to promote the efficiency of the evaluation of the patient's disability by using this ranking. In 61 patients with hemiplegia who were under a rehabilitation program, the grade of gait disturbance of each patient was examined by six physical therapists. The examination consisted of observation on 46 kinds of gait or related actions; of which 14 were with a handrail, 16 with a cane and 16 with empty hands. Each rater was requested to rate the patient's performance without any mutual discussion on the basis of 4 stages: impossible, possible with human assistance, possible but not practical, and practical from the standpoint of ADL. The data collected in this way were analysed by the principal component analysis. Both 46 test items and 366 case-raters were arranged according to the similarity and multidimensional numerical values were assigned to them, respectively. On two dimensional plane spanned by the first two components, all 46 test items were plotted on a parabola and, therefore, could be rearranged one-dimensionally. It was suggested that the rank of this new arrangement roughly paralleled to that of the difficulty of the tests, and could be diverted to be utilized for the scaling of the latter. The result of the patient's actual response for the tests, justified the rank of severity proposed by us to be practically satisfactory.
