Validation of the Brazilian version of the clinical gait and balance scale and comparison with the berg balance scale

Abstract

Objective: To validate the Clinical Gait and Balance Scale (GABS) for a Brazilian population of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and to compare it to the Berg Balance Scale (BBS). Methods: One hundred and seven PD patients were evaluated by shortened UPDRS motor scale (sUPDRSm), Hoehn and Yahr (HY), Schwab and England scale (SE), Falls Efficacy Scale International (FES-I), Freezing of Gait Questionnaire (FOG-Q), BBS and GABS. Results: The internal consistency of the GABS was 0.94, the intra-rater and inter-rater reliability were 0.94 and 0.98 respectively. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was 0.72, with a sensitivity of 0.75 and specificity of 0.6, to discriminate patients with a history of falls in the last twelve months, for a cut-off score of 13 points. Conclusions: Our study shows that the Brazilian version of the GABS is a reliable and valid instrument to assess gait and balance in PD.