Execution:
- Have the patient in supine lying position
- Depress the patient’s shoulder with your hand and bring it into 90° of abduction
- Extend the wrist and fingers(including the thumb), pronate the forearm, and bring the shoulder into lateral rotation
- Slowly bring the patient’s fingers and hand towards their ear (further abducting the shoulder)
- Confirm that the findings are due to nerve stretch by flexing the elbow a little to create slack and ask the patient to laterally flex their neck to the contralateral side, which should increase the symptoms again
Positive Outcome: The patient’s familiar arm symptoms like shooting pain or paresthesia is reproduced. Some author score the test negative in case of a marked decrease of mobility (>10°)
|
Study |
Reliability | Sn | Sp | LR+ |
LR- |
| Inter-rater к= 0.83 | 72 | 33 | 1.1 | 0.85 | |
| Apelby-Albrech et al. (2013): vs. MRI + medical exam | Inter-rater к= 0.52 | 71 | 87 | 5.71 |
0.33 |
| Schmid et al. (2009) | Inter-rater к= 0.36 | NA | NA | NA |
NA |
| Grondin et al. (2021) | NA | 40.74 | 93.10 | 5.91 |
0.64 |
