The impact of cervical radiculopathy on upper extremity motor preparation

Cervical radiculopathy is a common clinical description for patients with upper extremity sensorimotor dysfunction originating at the spine. Clinically, outcome measures for assessment are often based on subjective patient reported outcome measures. Such subjective measures have limitations including language and cognitive barriers. Reaction time can be used as a measure of motor preparation. The purpose of the present experiment was to determine if a reaction time task could be useful to discern differences in motor preparation between participants with cervical radiculopathy (n=9) from healthy controls (n=11). Using a between groups, cross sectional design, an upper extremity aiming task with variable levels of difficulty was performed. Participants recruited from a hospital based pre-surgical spine assessment clinic or the general community performed vertically oriented aiming movements in the sagittal plane to targets at three different heights, using two different target sizes. Participants with cervical radiculopathy demonstrated significantly longer reaction times than healthy control participants. The results of the present study provide preliminary evidence that reaction time measures may be appropriate to consider in the performance based assessment of patients with cervical radiculopathy. The exploration of further performance-based measures of the upper extremity are warranted.