RESUMO
A patient with type 2 spinocerebellar ataxia has difficulty in carrying out alternate movements such aspronation and supination. Objectives. To evaluate the function of an automatized system for measuring disorders of alternatemovements. Patients and methods. We studied the measurement of diadochokinesia in two groups of healthy patients, a first group (64persons) to determine the normal intervals and a second group to validate the test (52 persons). We also studied 100 patients forvalidation of the system. A further 53 patients were evaluated before and after rehabilitation. Results. Analysis of the basic measurementsfor diagnosis of diadochokinesia showed that the higher the cutoff point, the greater the sensitivity of the test, whereas the oppositeoccurred with the specificity. Thus, regarding a higher cutoff, there is a five times greater probability of a positive results in the patientsthan in healthy persons. However, the probability of a normal result is six times higher in healthy than in affected persons. The resultsof variant analysis done on patients before and after rehabilitation suggest that the presence of quantitative changes in the second studywas due to the positive effect of neurorehabilitation...(AU)