Handgrip strength and falls among community-dwelling older adults

• Autor(a) principal: Fernandes, Beatriz
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Outros Autores: Galán-Mercant, Alejandro, Tomás, Maria Teresa
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositórios Científicos de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.21/7719
• topic: Physiotherapy; Rehabilitation; Elderly; Falls prevention; Handgrip strength; Balance; Gait speed; Mobility; Berg Balance Scale; IPL/2016/SFQ2017_ESTeSL

Introduction: Falls prevention in older adults includes early screening for fall risk; risk factor assessment and specialized intervention. Several variables such as balance, gait speed and mobility have been used to assess the risk of falling. More recently, handgrip strength has also been identified for this purpose. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between handgrip strength and balance, gait speed and mobility in community-dwelling older adults. Methods: A sample of 45 community-dwelling older adults (16 M; 30F), aged 76.9 ± 8.6 was enrolled in the study. Inclusion criteria were age 65 and over; ability to walk autonomously (with or without assistive devices) and to understand and perform the tests. Participants were excluded if they had limitations interfering with the performance of tests and medical contraindications for exercise. A balance was assessed with the Berg Balance Scale (BBS), mobility with the 8-foot-up-and-go-test, gait speed with the 4-meter walk test and handgrip strength with the hydraulic dynamometer Jamar®. A Spearman’s correlation was run to investigate whether there were associations between variables. Results: A strong positive correlation was found between handgrip strength and balance (rs = 0.645, p = 0.000) and handgrip strength and gait speed (rs = 0.593, p = 0.000). Results from the 8-foot-up-and-go-test (7.8 ± 3.4 s) did not reveal increased risk of falling; however, there was a strong negative correlation between mobility and balance (rs = 0.758, p = 0.000), gait speed (rs = -0.681, p = 0.000) and handgrip strength (rs = -0.632, p = 0.000). Conclusions: For our participants as handgrip strength increases gait speed and balance also increase. Decreases in balance, gait speed, and handgrip strength are related to mobility decline which is related to an increased risk of falling. Our results point-out handgrip strength as a valuable measure to identify the risk of falling. Further studies with larger samples are needed to confirm these results.