Manual ability and its relationship with daily activities in adolescents with cerebral palsy.

Abstract

To describe the manual ability of adolescents with cerebral palsy and to investigate the relationship of manual ability with daily activities. Cross-sectional study. Ninety-four adolescents with cerebral palsy, aged 12-16 years. Manual ability was assessed according to the Manual Ability Classification System (MACS) and the ABILHAND-Kids. Daily activities were assessed with the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales (VABS) sub-scales for (personal and domestic) daily living skills. The relationship between manual ability and daily activities was investigated with regression analysis: independent variables were manual ability, disease and personal characteristics. MACS and ABILHAND-Kids were both strongly associated with personal daily activities (explained variance 77% and 84%, respectively) and less strongly with domestic daily activities (explained variance 45% and 62%, respectively). Including other disease characteristics and personal characteristics in the model increased the explained variance of personal daily activities to 91% for both models and the explained variance of domestic daily activities to 68% and 73% for the MACS and ABILHAND-Kids models, respectively. Manual ability is limited in many adolescents with cerebral palsy, and limitations in manual ability are strongly related to limitations in daily activities.