A reliability study of a novel visual ischemic palpation scale in an experimental setting.

Background: Manual palpation is an important part of the clinical examination and generally it has low reliability. The aim of this study was to assess the reliability of a novel method for discriminating 3 different levels of palpation force.

Methods: This reliability study included 96 healthy physiotherapists and physiotherapy students, who have been taught a new palpation graduated procedure called Visual Ischemic Palpatory Scale (VIPS), aimed to classify the applied pressure based on the finger's ischemia.