Assessment of Spasticity in Patients with Stroke (Systematic Review of Literature)

Considering the importance of spasticity in the treatment of the patients with upper motor neuron lesion, the present study was conducted to review the studies concerning measuring spasticity assessment and also methods of spasticity assessment in the patients with cerebrovascular accident so as to recommend the best method for assessment of the spasticity according to the advantages and disadvantages of each method.
A literature search for the period of 1995-2013 was performed in the databases of PubMed, Mdconsult, Sciencedirect, Pedro, SID, and Google scholar. Also, Spasticity, Ashworth, Hemiplegia, Measurement devices, Stroke, Assessment were used as key words.
Sixty nine articles were selected according to the inclusion criteria of the study. There was a wide variation among studies in terms of methodology, main outcome measures, and muscles that were evaluated. It can thus be suggested that to recognize spasticity, a combination of the different methods of spasticity measurement is required.