The Relationship Between The Line Bisection Test And Behavioral Unilateral Neglect In Patients With Stroke

Objective: Line bisection test and behavioral assessment are both important methods in the study of unilateral neglect. Until now, the relationship between the One bisection test and behavioral assessment is not clear. In this study, we studied the relationship between the One bisection test and behavioral assessment to see whether the One bisection test can be used as a simple method to predict the severity of the behavioral unilateral neglect.Methods: Twenty stroke patients and twenty healthy people with matching age took part in the study, the latter served as control subjects. All the subjects were assessed by behavioral assessment and line bisection test. In behavioral assessment, Catherine Bergego Scale(CBS) was used to divide the patients into four groups (no hemineglect, mild hemineglect, moderate hemineglect and severe hemineglect). There are ten items in the scale and every item is divided into four ratings according to the severity of the neglect, 0 1 2 3 was the matching marks of the four ratings. The data for statistics were sums of the ten items. In line bisection test, three lines of ten centimeters were presented on the left, middle and right of a A4 paper separately. The subjectss were asked to bisect the lines by placing a short cross mark in the middle point of each line on the paper. The data for statistics were proportions of the length of the right parts after bisectint to the length of the whole lines. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare the patients and controls and compare different groups in patients according to CBS. The relationship between the One bisection test and the CBS was analyzed by the Spearman rank correlation coefficient.Results: In the left, middle and right lines, the Spearman rank correlation coefficients between proportions of the length of the right parts to the length of the whole lines and the total scores of CBS were 0.854 (P<0.01) ,0.479 (P<0.05) ,and r=0.238 (P>0.05) respectively. If this proportion less than 45% after bisecting left and middle lines, almost all the patients had moderate to sever behavioral unilateral neglect.Conclusion: The is a strong relationship between the line bisection test and behavioral unilateral neglect, we can use this simple table test to predict behavioral unilateral neglect.