Can Clinician-Stabilization with Hand-Held Dynamometry Yield a Reliable Measure of Knee Flexion Torque?
Daniel Larson, Daniel Lorenz, Brittany Melton
PMID 36237659WHAT IT FOUND
Clinician-stabilized hand-held dynamometer tests of knee flexion torque were repeatable between testers and across sessions.
The prone method may better detect true change. Findings are limited to healthy participants and two male testers.
Key findings
01Clinician-stabilized hand-held dynamometer testing of knee flexion torque showed good to excellent agreement between examiners within the same session.
02Within each examiner across sessions, reliability was good for the seated position and excellent for the prone position for examiner 1, and good to excellent for both positions for examiner 2.
03The prone position yielded lower minimal detectable change values, and the paper states this may make it more sensitive to detecting actual change.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Only 20 healthy recreationally active individuals were tested. There was no formal power analysis before the study. The 10 second rest between trials may have been too short for some participants to produce true maximal force. There was no separate familiarization day without data collection. Both examiners were males weighing over 200 pounds who regularly resistance train, so results may not apply to other clinician characteristics. Participants were healthy and had no history of significant hip or knee injury, so findings may not apply to injured patients. The results apply only to these specific testing positions, joint angles, examiners, and procedures, not to all hand-held dynamometer setups. This was not a comparison of clinician stabilization with belt or external fixation. These findings do not extend to stronger actions such as knee or hip extension, where external stabilization has generally shown better reliability.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that clinician stabilization is equivalent to belt or external fixation. This study tested only two clinician-stabilized methods and did not compare them with external fixation. It also studied healthy people, not injured patients.