Grip Strength…a measure of morbidity

One of the more interesting things I learnt at university was that grip strength is a measure of morbidity (disease). By measuring grip strength in midlife we can predict physical disability into the elderly years. In addition, a measure of grip strength adds to the overall picture of a patients health when we see them in the clinic.

Most of the time we will use grip strength tests in patients who have an upper limb injury, the elderly, falls risk patient assessments and patients with a known chronic disease such as diabetes or cardiovascular disease.

In the elderly, as we age our grip strength reduces, quite often in the dominant limb which is interesting because you would think that you’d be stronger in your dominant arm but it’s not necessarily the case. By having weakness in your dominant side you can see how it would impact upon everyday life, just opening up that tight jar, getting dressed, opening a car door, so many things that can make life feel harder in general.

It’s a very easy test to conduct, where we use a hand dynamometer and measure against normative values for grip strength based on age. The procedure doesn’t hurt, and takes a few minutes if that. The patient sits in a neutral posture elbow bent to 90 degrees arm at the side and forearm/wrist and hand neutral or “thumbs up” as I always say. The dynamometer is held in the hand with some support underneath and you squeeze as hard as you can with control. Generally we’ll take the best of three goes, and we expect to see that you are 10% stronger in your dominant arm.

So when you next have a physio include a grip strength test in your session, you know why.

See you in the clinic

Sam and Andy