| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 職能治療學系碩博士班 === 97 === Patients with carpal tunnel syndrome suffer from neurological symptoms which
are caused by the compression on median nerve. Some of the symptoms, like pain and
numbness, may increase the difficulty to execute activities of daily living.
Handwriting task is one of the activities which are easily influenced by the sensory
disturbance, because people need lots of sensory feedback to regulate strength and
movement constantly when doing handwriting task. However, there are few apparatus
for analyzing the biomechanical aspect of handwriting. Thus, this study develops an
apparatus to measure the strength of pen grip and to investigate the
handwriting-related kinetics. By analyzing the data from CTS and normal group, we
could probe into how this disease influencing handwriting movements.
We used a concrete calibration technology and statistical analysis to examine the
test-retest reliability and criterion-related validity of the apparatus. This research
recruited 15 CTS patients and 14 control subjects which are age and sex matched as
the experimental and control group, respectively. The CTS group embraced test twice,
before and after operation, and the normal group proceeded only once to record their handwriting performance via the pen apparatus and motion capture system. Each
complete test contained filling investigation form, clinical evaluation, and writing task.
After data collecting, the recorded information was translated into several meaningful
parameters, and then suitable statistical analyses were used to examine whether
significance difference between groups existence or not.
The results show good test-retest reliability and criterion-related validity of the
apparatus. For those defined parameters, safety margin, modulation index, and force
ratio, some of the experimental results show significant difference between groups.
According to the results, the CTS patients with worse ability of pen-tip force and
finger force regulation were shown. This discovery might provide valuable
information to take part in the clinical intervention of occupational therapy in the
development of new evaluation and treatment strategies. More handwriting
biomechanics- related topic will also be suggested studying using this apparatus with
good reliability and validity in the further works.
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