A short scale for the assessment of motor impairments and disabilities in Parkinson's disease:: the SPES/SCOPA

Objectives: To evaluate the reliability and validity of the Short Parkinson's Evaluation Scale (SPES)/SCales for Outcomes in Parkinson's disease (SCOPA)- a short scale developed to assess motor function in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Methods: Eighty five patients with PD were assessed with the SPES/SCOPA, Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS), Hoehn and Yahr (H&Y) scale, and Schwab and England (S&E) scale. Thirty four patients were examined twice by two different assessors who were blinded to each other's scores and test executions. Additionally, six items of the motor section of the SPES/SCOPA were assessed in nine patients and recorded on videotape to evaluate inter-rater and intra-rater reliability. Results: The reproducibility of the sum scores in the clinical assessments was high for all subscales of the SPES/SCOPA. Inter-rater reliability coefficients for individual items ranged from 0.27 - 0.83 in the motor impairment section, from 0.58 - 0.82 in the activities of daily living section, and from 0.65 - 0.92 in the motor complications section. Inter-rater reliability of the motor items in the video assessments ranged from 0.70 - 0.87 and intra-rater reliability ranged from 0.81 - 0.95. The correlation between related subscales of the SPES/SCOPA and UPDRS were all higher than 0.85, and both scales revealed similar correlations with other measures of disease severity. The mean time to complete the scales differed significantly (p< 0.001) and measured 8.1 (SD 1.9) minutes for the SPES/SCOPA and 15.6 ( SD 3.6) minutes for the UPDRS. Conclusion: The SPES/SCOPA is a short, reliable, and valid scale that can adequately be used in both research and clinical practice.