title: Nutritional assessment by hand grip dynamometry.
abstract: Hand grip dynamometry was studied in 109 normally nourished and 26 malnourished patients. The grip strength was 37,5 +/- 9,9 kg/m2 in normal men, 30,5 +/- 14,4 kg/m2 in men with carcinoma of the oesophagus (starvation-adapted) and 22,0 +/- 9,2 kg/m2 in catabolic men (P less than 0,001). Normal women had a grip strength of 31,6 +/- 7,5 kg/m2 compared with 22,3 +/- 7,0 in catabolic women (P = 0,083). Hand grip dynamometry fell with age (r = 0,69 men; r = 0,57 women), although the correlation was only statistically significant in women (P less than 0,05). There was a strong correlation between right and left hand grip (r = 0,84 men; r = 0,86 women), but hand grip did not correlate well with other indices of nutritional status. Although hand grip dynamometry is a quick, easy and reproducible test, and grip strength is reduced in malnutrition, it cannot replace other tests of nutritional status.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006225:Hand; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009119:Muscle Contraction; D009748:Nutrition Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology; D009747:Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; D012016:Reference Values; D012737:Sex Factors