Introduction:

Little research has been conducted on some complications secondary to radial access for coronary arteriography in patients with ACS, such as loss of handgrip strength and radial flow alteration. These are not routinely evaluated, unaware that they may compromise the performance of trades that require fine skills or activities in daily life.

Material and methods:

Prospective observational longitudinal cohort study, a sample of 77 patients diagnosed with ACS, undergoing radial access to coronary arteriography. For data analysis, we used the IBM SPSS® V.21 statistical package. We used a Sahean Corporation® brand hydraulic dynamometer for the force measurement, and we performed a comparative analysis of related samples; t-Student test and binary logistic regression.

Results:

Proportion according to gender was 48.1% women and 51.9% men, the median age of 66 years (58-72). In the handgrip strength of patients with radial access, we found a statistically significant difference between the initial and final measurement p < 0.001 (IC 95%: 1.59-4.07).

Conclusions:

We found a significant loss of handgrip strength in both genders, with lower than optimal force values for IADL, findings so far explained by the type of intervention that requires future studies.