A critical examination of an instrument to measure lumbar rotation range of motion

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the reliability of the Back Range of Motion (BROM) instrument in assessing lumbar rotation. One hundred subjects (50 males, 50 females) between the ages of 18-28 were measured by the investigator. A total of ten measurements per subject were obtained for left and right rotation. Five left and right rotations comprised the first set of scores; these were followed by five more measurements of left and right rotation that comprised the second set of scores. A Pearson r of 0.97 was obtained for the correlation between the means of the five trials of each set. Intraclass correlation coefficients were computed to further determine the reliability between each set of measurements. Values of r = 0.997 and 0.998 were obtained for trials 1-5 and 6-10, respectively. An intraclass correlation coefficient was then calculated for the reliability between the two sets of scores (r = 0.995). Findings of this investigation indicate that the BROM instrument can be used to make reliable measurements of lumbar rotation.