Measuring Muscle Strength for People With Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Retest Reliability of Hand-Held Dynamometry
Abstract
O’Shea SD, Taylor NF, Paratz JD. Measuring muscle strength for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: retest reliability of hand-held dynamometry.
Objective
To evaluate the retest reliability and quantify the degree of measurement error when measuring isometric muscle strength with a hand-held dynamometer for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Design
Retest reliability of hand-held dynamometry for 4 muscle groups was assessed on 2 occasions separated by a 2-week interval.
Setting
Community rehabilitation center.
Participants
Eight men and 4 women (mean age ± standard deviation, 71.4±10.3y) with moderately severe COPD (percentage of predicted forced expiratory volume in 1 second, 41.5%±17.7%).
Interventions
Not applicable.
Main Outcome Measures
Muscle strength (in kilograms). Statistical analysis was conducted by calculating intraclass correlation coefficients and 95% confidence intervals for both group and individual scores.
Results
All reliability coefficients were greater than .79. Muscle strength would need to increase by between 4% and 18% in groups of people with COPD and between 34% and 58% in a person with COPD to be 95% confident of detecting real changes.
Conclusions
Hand-held dynamometry is suitable for monitoring change in muscle strength and testing hypotheses for groups of people with COPD. However, hand-held dynamometry is not likely to detect changes in muscle strength for a person with COPD.
aPhysiotherapy Department, Wodonga Regional Health Service, Wodonga, Australia
bMusculoskeletal Research Centre, School of Physiotherapy, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia
cSchool of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
Reprint requests to Nicholas F. Taylor, PhD, PT, School of Physiotherapy, La Trobe University, Victoria 3086, Australia.
No commercial party having a direct financial interest in the results of the research supporting this article has or will confer a benefit upon the author(s) or upon any organization with which the author(s) is/are associated.