The aim of the study was to assess reliability, validity and responsiveness of Duruoz Hand Index (DHI), which has been developed for evaluation of activity limitation in rheumatoid arthritis in patients with traumatic hand flexor tendon injuries.
Sixty-five patients older than 16 years who underwent surgical intervention after flexor tendon injuries were enrolled. Reliability was assessed by internal consistency (with Cronbach's-α) and test-retest intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Construct validity was estimated correlating the scale with the DASH and VAS-hd. Also responsiveness was estimated using standardised response mean (SRM) and effect size (ES).
Mean age of the patients was 30.25 ± 11.07 years and totally 140 fingers were evaluated. Cronbach's-α and ICC values of DHI were found to be 0.87 and 0.99, respectively. In validation study, highly significant correlation was detected between DHI with DASH and VAS-hd (r = 0.86, r = 0.54, p < 0.0001, respectively). SRM values and ES values (excepting workplaces subgroup score) were higher than 0.80 for total and all subgroup scores.
DHI is a reliable, valid questionnaire to assess hand-related activity limitation in patients with traumatic hand flexor tendon injuries. Also, due to its high level responsiveness DHI can be used for assessing the clinical course of the traumatic hand flexor tendon injured patient.