In this video I'm going to show you how to test for muscle weakness in the upper middle and lower part of the Trapezius muscle In order to test the general strength of all the three parts of the Trapezius muscle Have your patient in sitting position and ask him to abduct the arms to about 120 degrees. Then push your patient's elbows forward and ask him to resist the movement Okay You're looking for the contraction of all the three parts of the Trapezius muscle And you check if your patient can resist your movement To test the upper part of the trapezius muscle ask your patient to shrug the shoulders with the arms slightly abducted. This slight abduction is necessary to lower the contribution of the rhomboids and the levator scapulae.
If you want you can also apply resistance. Okay Another way to test the upper Trapezius is to resist abduction and ipsilateral lateral flexion of the head Okay to test the middle part of the trapezius muscle have your patient in prone position with the arm abducted to 90 degrees and lateral rotation Then ask your patient to horizontally extend the arm and give resistance Okay To test the lower part of the Trapezius muscle have the patient in prone lying position with the arm abducted to 120 degrees and then give resistance to diagonal extension Okay all right, this was our video on how to test for Trapezius weakness. If you want to know how to test for other muscles that are important for good scapular function make sure to watch our video on how to test for the Serratus anterior or watch our video on the lateral rotation lag sign right here.
As always, I hope this video was helpful for you, if it was give it a like, subscribe to our channel if you haven't or follow us on Facebook and check out our webpage physiotutors. com This was Kai for Physiotutors.
