Evaluation of four methods for the assessment of joint swelling in dogs
Evaluation of joint swelling is an important part of the orthopedic examination and can be used to follow a patient?s progress during rehabilitation and therapy. Usually a swelling is assessed by palpating the joint but a more objective, but still easy to use, method would be preferable.This study seeks to increase the knowledge in veterinary rehabilitation by validating four different measurement tools (three recognized and one novel) for the assessment of elbow joint swelling: palpation, tape measure (circumference and figure eight measurement), slide caliper (craniocaudal and mediolateral positioning) and tonometer. This was achieved by calculating the inter- and intra-rater reliability and correlating the results from the different measurements with each other.The methods with best inter- and intra-rater reliability as well as good correlation among themselves were shown to be slide caliper with craniocaudal positioning, circumference and figure eight. Additional studies, with a larger and more diverse material, ought to investigate these methods further.