Concordance of grip strength measurement between a digital handheld dynamometer and a Hydraulic dynamometer.

Abstract

Background: Assessment of muscle strength is of great interest for the study of age-associated pathologies, including frailty and sarcopenia. However, the cost of some of the equipment necessary for its evaluation could be prohibitive for its generalized use in some settings.

Objective: The purpose of the present study was to compare two handheld dynamometers to evaluate the measure of concordance between the measurements. Material and methods The study was conducted in the outpatient Geriatrics clinics where 120 community-dwelling participants aged 60 years and more were evaluated using two devices: the JAMAR^® Hydraulic Hand Dynamometer and the digital hand dynamometer CAMRY^® EH101.

Results: We observed a positive correlation between the two devices for dominant hand (DH) Pearson r 0.974 (p < 0.001) and a Spearman ρ 0.973 (p < 0.001) for non-dominant hand (NDH) Lin's coefficient for the DH was 0.98 (p < 0.001) and for the NDH 0.97 (p < 0.001). The intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.971 (95% CI, 0.95-0.97; p < 0.001) for DH and 0.975 (95% CI, 0.96-0.98; p < 0.001) for NDH.

Conclusions: In this study, the Camry dynamometer was observed to be reliable for measuring hand grip strength in community-dwelling people 60 years or older.