Abstract
The burden of hip muscles weakness and its relation to other impairments has been well documented. It is therefore a pre-requisite to have a reliable method for clinical assessment of hip muscles function allowing the design and implementation of a proper strengthening program. Motor-driven dynamometry has been widely accepted as the gold-standard for lower limb muscle strength assessment but is mainly related to the knee joint. Studies focusing on the hip joint are less exhaustive and somewhat discrepant with regard to optimal participants position, consequently influencing outcome measures. Thus, we aimed to develop a standardized test setup for the assessment of hip muscles strength, i.e. flexors/extensors and abductors/adductors, with improved participant stability and to define its psychometric characteristics. Eighteen participants performed unilateral isokinetic and isometric contractions of the hip muscles in the sagittal and coronal plane at two separate occasions. Peak torque and normalized peak torque were measured for each contraction. Relative and absolute measures of reliability were calculated using the intraclass correlation coefficient and standard error of measurement, respectively. Results from this study revealed higher levels of between-day reliability of isokinetic/isometric hip abduction/flexion peak torque compared to existing literature. The least reliable measures were found for hip extension and adduction, which could be explained by a less efficient stabilization technique. Our study additionally provided a first set of reference normalized data which can be used in future research.
Highlights
Hip muscles play an important role in the normal function of the lower limb [1,2]
Literature shows that hip muscle dysfunction is associated with low back pain [3,4] and other lower limb impairments or diseases such as patellofemoral pain syndrome [5,6,7] and hip and knee osteoarthritis [8,9]
Participants were excluded in case of low back pain, lower limb muscle pathology and/or joint degeneration, cardiovascular, metabolic or pulmonary disease, or a body mass index (BMI) > 30 kg/m2
Summary
Literature shows that hip muscle dysfunction is associated with low back pain [3,4] and other lower limb impairments or diseases such as patellofemoral pain syndrome [5,6,7] and hip and knee osteoarthritis [8,9] Such dysfunction can either be inherent to an underlying pathology or a secondary consequence of pathology or surgical intervention, e.g. total hip arthroplasty (THA) [10,11]. Several gait studies showed that patients following THA present an abnormal gait pattern related to iatrogenic gluteal muscle weakness [12,13] These findings point towards the importance of an adequate assessment of muscle function allowing the design and implementation of a proper strengthening program. A major drawback of HHD entails the lack of standardization of the participants’ starting position and the placement of the assessor and the dynamometer
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