A pilot study of reference vibrotactile perception thresholds on the fingertip obtained with Malaysian healthy people using ISO 13091-1 equipment.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the reference vibrotactile perception thresholds (VPT) for healthy people in Malaysia. The measurement equipment standard, ISO 13091-1, of the vibrotactile perception thresholds for the assessment of nerve dysfunction and the analysis and interpretation of measurements at the fingertips standard, ISO 13091-2, were published in ISO/TC108/SC4/WG8 on 2001 and 2003 individually. In the ISO 13091-2 standard, the reference VPT data were obtained from few research papers. Malaysian people's VPT data don't include to this standard. In Malaysia, when the VPT is using to diagnose of the hand-arm vibration syndrome, the reference VPT data need to compare with the worker's ones. But, Malaysia does not have the reference VPT data yet. So, in this paper, the VPT was measured by using ISO 13091-1 standard equipment to obtain the reference data for Malaysian people. And these data were compared with the ISO reference data on the ISO 13091-2 standard. From the comparison of these data, it was clear that the Malaysian healthy people's VPT data were consistent with the reference data of the ISO 13091-2 standard.