COMPARISON BETWEEN ESTIMATES OF HAND VOLUME AND HAND STRENGTH AS WITHSEX AND AGE WITH AND WITHOUT ANTHROPOMETRIC DATA IN HEALTHY WORKING PEOPLE

Edema and hand strength measurements are useful for the recovery asses sment of patients with a hand lesion. This work determined and compare d estimates of hand volume, grip strengths (measured with a Jamar and a Collins dynamometer), and pinch strength (with a Jamar pinch gauge) in terms of sex and age with or without anthropometric indices in heal thy working people. The sample included 100 subjects from within the s taffs of two rehabilitation centres. For both grip strengths, multiple linear regression models including body height, weight, and arm muscl e area were very good (multiple correlation coefficient R of about 0.8 4) and clearly better than those obtained with sex and age only. For p inch strength, the best estimate was obtained with sex and arm muscle area (R of 0.76); for hand volume, the model with sex, body height, an d weight provided the best result (R of 0.93). These findings suggeste d that anthropometric indices easy to measure must be taken into accou nt to estimate hand volume and hand strengths.