As part of a multicenter investigation of the perceptual and behavioral aspects of orthognathic surgery, the present study sought to evaluate the interexaminer reliability of three subjective neurosensory tests that collectively identify spontaneously occurring and stimulus-evoked abnormal sensations, assess sensation magnitude of pinprick, and evaluate two-point perception. The principalaim of this reliability study was to assess the performance of examiners who were inexperienced with these subjective tests. An assessment of interexaminer reliability was performed for all three tests. Twenty-three patients with varying degrees of sensory impairment were enrolled in the study. Kappa (K) and intraclass correlation (ICC) statistics indicated excellent interexaminer reliability for the identification of spontaneous and evoked abnormal sensations (K approximated 1.0) and for the two-point perception test (mean ICC = 0.98). Reliability was less, but nevertheless moderate to high, for patients' estimates of the magnitude of sensation evoked by pinprick (mean ICC = 0.84). The three subjective neurosensory tests employed in this study exhibit characteristics including high interexaminer reliability required for use in multicenter, multiexaminer longitudinal studies of the neurosensory changes that occur after orthognathic surgery.
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