Muhammad Abubakar Siddique, Muhammad Waqar Afzal, Ashfaq Ahmad, Syed Amir Gilani, Muhammad Arslan Saleemi.
Quantitative comparison of handgrip strength between cardiac patients and age matched healthy controls using a handheld dynamometer.
Khyber Med Uni Med J Jan ;10(4):196-9.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the quantitative comparison of handgrip strength between cardiac patients and age matched healthy controls using a handheld dynamometer. METHODS: This quantitative comparison cross-sectional study was conducted at University of Lahore teaching hospital, Lahore from 17th, October 2017 to 5th February 2018. Twenty cardiac and twenty age matched healthy participants were selected using consecutive (non-probability) sampling technique. After approval from ethical committee, data was collected using questionnaire. Measurements were taken of grip strength of both hands by using Jammer Dynamometer. This method was repeated three times in order to obtain mean value of both hands. RESULTS: In this study 40 subjects were studied with mean age of the participants as 62.08±7.63years. Among them 23(57.5%) were male and 17(42.5%) were female. Mean age of males were 65±7.37years whereas mean age of females were 64.11±7.75years. Out of twenty cardiac patients, 12(60%) male and 5 (25%) female were suffering from myocardial infarction, 3(15%) female had Angina. Twenty participants of age-matched healthy individual group included 11 (55%) males and 9 (45%) females. In quantitative comparison of the dominant handgrip strength of cardiac patients (54.28 ± 27.75) and age matched healthy control (74.78±30.33) there was noteworthy difference in mean values of both groups with significant p-value of 0.032 whereas in the strength of non-dominant hand grip in cardiac patients (54.11±26.46) and age matched healthy control (71.03±29.25), no significant difference was recorded. CONCLUSION: Grip strength of dominant hand is less in cardiac patients as compared to healthy normal individual with significant relationship whereas there is no significant difference among non-dominant hand strength in both groups.

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