Validation of the Brazilian version of the Clinical Gait and Balance Scale and comparison with the Berg Balance Scale.

OBJECTIVE To validate the Clinical Gait and Balance Scale (GABS) for a Brazilian population of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and to compare it to the Berg Balance Scale (BBS). METHODS One hundred and seven PD patients were evaluated by shortened UPDRS motor scale (sUPDRSm), Hoehn and Yahr (HY), Schwab and England scale (SE), Falls Efficacy Scale International (FES-I), Freezing of Gait Questionnaire (FOG-Q), BBS and GABS. RESULTS The internal consistency of the GABS was 0.94, the intra-rater and inter-rater reliability were 0.94 and 0.98 respectively. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was 0.72, with a sensitivity of 0.75 and specificity of 0.6, to discriminate patients with a history of falls in the last twelve months, for a cut-off score of 13 points. CONCLUSIONS Our study shows that the Brazilian version of the GABS is a reliable and valid instrument to assess gait and balance in PD.