ABSTRACT
According to the World Health Organization International Classification of Impairment, Disability, and Handicap, disability is “any restriction or lack (resulting from an impairment) of ability to perform an activity within the range considered normal for a human being.” It concerns the consequence of the impairment at the personal level and it is the reflection of performances in activities of daily living (ADL) (1, 2). The basic ADLs include all the self-care skills necessary for personal independence: feeding, dressing, bathing, grooming, toileting, continence, transfers, and mobility. So the different scales that attempt to evaluate these functional abilities must be able to assess patient progress with good reliability and validity. Since the late 1980s, many scales or indexes have been developed and used for outcome evaluation of stroke patients. They may assist not only clinical management but also research or medical audit. These scales are also useful for assessing outcome in many different conditions, especially the ability to live independently (3-5). Moreover, most of these scales measure independence in ADL in a similar manner (6, 7). In this chapter we will describe the best-known and most extensively studied scales.
