The Effect of Hand and Finger Exercise on Grip Strength and Pinch Pressure in Elderly Women

손과 손가락 근관절운동이 노년기 여성의 악력과 잡기력에 미치는 영향

Introduction : Exercise has been suggested as an important nursing strategy in which to help elderly maintain functional performance and to enhanced quality of life. Most of exercise study has been reported on fitness exercise such as walking, swimming, dance etc for health of elderly. There have been few reports about exercise on the promotion of small and fine movement of elderly. The purpose of this pilot study was to determine an effect of 6 weeks hand and finger exercise in home to improve hand muscle strength such as grip strength and finger pinch pressure. Materials and Methods Design: This pilot study was used one group pre and post-test design. Sample: Twelve elderly women above 60 years of age or older living in community were selected by convenient sampling. Procedure: Signed informed consent was obtained prior to participate in this study. The authors met elderly and taught hand and finger exercise, daily a week for 6 weeks, within 30 minutes per session. But exercise frequency and strength were not same. Instruments: Left and right grip strength were measured by Bulb Dynamometer(made in USA) and left and right pinch pressure were measured by Baseline Hydraulic Pinch Gauge(made in USA). Data analysis: Discriptive data analyses were performed on all variables. Wilcoxon matched-pairs Signed-Ranks test were used to find difference of grip strength and pinch pressure between pre and post exercise using SPSS 10.0 for Window. Results: Samples age ranged from 60 to 73, Mean age was 65.3. All were women. Ten elderly were diagnosed osteoarthritis and one had DM. After six weeks hand and finger exercise, Left and right grip strength were higher than those of before exercise(Z=-2.667, P<0.01 ; Z=-3.065, p<0.01). And left pinch pressure after hand and linger exercise were higher than that of before pinch pressure (Z=-2.315, p<0.05). But Right pinch pressure was not shown significant change(Z=-1.099, p>0.05). Conclusions: Although this study was limited by the sample size and design, the findings provide some important implications for community based exercise nursing intervention. Short term (six weeks) exercise of hand and linger is shown to be useful as nursing intervention to maintain routine daily activities such as eating, writing, grip something for elderly.