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Nuanced Differences in Dexterity Between the Dominant and Non-Dominant Hands of Healthy Young Adults
Brian J Conway, MD, MS
1; Léon Taquet, BS
1; Timothy F Boerger, PhD
1; Kaitlin Goetschel, BS
1; Kate B Krucoff, MD
2; Sergey Tarima, PhD
1; Max O Krucoff, MD
11Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI; 2Medical College of Wisconsin, Wauwatosa, WI
Introduction:A patient's hand function is often evaluated for the first time in the setting of injury without knowledge of their baseline hand function. The opposite hand is frequently the best available internal control. Yet, differences in dexterous abilities of the dominant and non-dominant hand are often underappreciated. Additionally, there is mixed evidence on whether hand dexterity differs between males and females, offering an additional confounding factor in measuring restoration of hand function. To bridge this gap, here we performed a study to identify such differences in young, healthy, right-handed individuals.
Materials & Methods:A cohort of 47 right-hand-dominant adults (22 male, 25 female, mean age (SD) 25.8 (4.15)) with no prior history of hand injury or neurologic disease performed individual flexion of each finger while joint angle data were collected with the Cyberglove III (CyberGlove Systems, San Jose, CA). Finger individuation (i.e., the ability to move each finger to its range-of-motion limit without moving the other fingers) was scored using equations previously developed by our lab and others, as was smoothness of movement. The ability to individuate each finger was compared to its contralateral side using Wilcoxon-signed rank tests, and these results were analyzed with the effects of age and sex using linear mixed effect modeling. Hand dexterity asymmetry was calculated by subtracting metrics of the left hand from the right hand and was compared across sexes using two-sample t-tests and multivariate linear regression.
Results:Significant differences that persisted on multivariate modeling included thumb individuation (p<0.0001) and smoothness (p<0.0001), index individuation (p<0.0005), and middle individuation (p=0.0091), with the right hand scoring higher than the left. Additionally, females demonstrated significantly more asymmetry on two-sample t-tests, which persisted on multivariate linear regression. Specifically, females had greater asymmetry of thumb (p=0.044) and ring finger (p=0.020) individuation scores, as well as ring finger smoothness (p=0.036) compared to males.
Conclusions:Here we present the largest study to-date examining quantitative differences in hand dexterity between hands in young, healthy, right-handed adults. Our findings suggest nuanced differences between the dominant and non-dominant hands, specifically the thumb, index, and middle fingers. Additionally, females demonstrated greater hand asymmetry for the thumb and ring finger compared to males. Findings from this work can inform the care of patients who present with injury to the hand motor system at any level during diagnostic evaluation, the determination of need for surgical intervention, and tracking the progress of recovery through therapy.
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