Background: patients with newly placed arteriovenous fistula are generally advised to perform hand exercise because of its effects on fistula maturation. Aim of the study was to compare between two different hand exercises in improving hand grip strength for patients underwent arteriovenous fistula surgery.

Setting: Vascular surgery department and outpatient clinics of the vascular surgery at Assiut University Hospital. Subjects 60 patients who had chronic kidney disease and had undergone arteriovenous fistula surgery for hemodialysis. After the surgery, subjects divided into two groups one group(30) used hand gripping GD grip squeezing exercise and the other one(30) used soft ball squeezing exercise. The subjects continued the exercises for 4 weeks. The hand strength of the subjects were assessed before and after the hand-squeezing exercises.

Results: Showed that 25 patients of both groups had pain of the access arm, 6 patients had abnormal sensation of the access arm and both groups had normal access arm and had thrill on palpation and bruit on auscultation.

Conclusion: The results showed that hand squeezing exercise with GD Grip was more effective in improving hand grip strength compared to hand squeezing exercise with soft ball.

Recommendations: Further research to evaluate the effect of the improved hand strength on the activities of daily living, and replication of the study using a larger probability sample acquired from different geographical areas.