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A New Method for the Quality Assurance of Strength Measurements

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Book cover Modern Functional Evaluation Methods for Muscle Strength and Gait Analysis

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology ((BRIEFSAPPLSCIENCES))

Abstract

This chapter describes the methods and the results of a research project aimed at the development of a modern protocol for the quality assurance of clinical strength measurements conducted by the handheld dynamometer (HHD). As several reliability issues in HHD measurements were raised in the literature, such analysis is needed in order to assess the quality and reliability issues occurring when measuring the maximum voluntary forces and moments exerted by human muscles. The chapter begins with a literature review about the methods commonly adopted to measure strength in clinical contexts and some modern works that involved the use of the HHD. Then, the methods of the novel protocol are described. The designed protocol takes advantage of an optoelectronic system to measure the HHD positioning with respect to the patient, its undesired motion during the trial, and an overall index of trial quality. The preliminary design and setup of the protocol is presented. Preliminary results are discussed as well as the limitations and issues encountered in the first design. Then, the final setup is presented, as well as the results of two campaigns of measurements conducted on knee and ankle strength assessment on adult healthy subjects. In knee strength measurements, the most relevant source of inaccuracy is identified in the angular displacement on the horizontal plane and the use of a single-component HHD induces an overall inaccuracy of ~5%. Knee extension trials are the most critical due to the higher force exerted. In ankle strength assessment, the most relevant source of inaccuracy is the angular displacement on both the sagittal and horizontal planes and the worst results are observed for plantarflexion trials. Thus, the HHD measurement method is not recommended for evaluating ankle plantarflexion strength. The proposed protocol may be used in clinical contexts for the quality assurance of HHD strength measurements and in those cases where high accuracy of measurements is essential.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially sponsored by the ‘MD-Paedigree’ European Project (Model-Driven Paediatric European Digital Repository, FP7—ICT Program) and by the PRIN2012 Project (Mechanical measurements for the musculoskeletal apparatus: novel and standardisable methodologies for metrological assessment of measurement systems).

The author wishes to acknowledge the clinical staff of the Motion Analysis and Robotics Laboratory (MARLab) at ‘Bambino Gesù’ Children Hospital, Palidoro, Rome, Italy, for the use of their lab and the help provided in data acquisition.

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    Andrea Ancillao

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Ancillao, A. (2018). A New Method for the Quality Assurance of Strength Measurements. In: Modern Functional Evaluation Methods for Muscle Strength and Gait Analysis. SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67437-7_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67437-7_2

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