Exercise Equations

Durada

2012 - 2017

Coordinador

Judith Garcia Aymerich

Finançadors

SOCAP, SEPAR

The tests to assess exercise tolerance have gained importance in recent years. Among them, the six-minute walk test (6MWT) and the incremental shuttle walk test (ISWT) are widely used in clinical practice and research, specifically for patients with chronic respiratory disease such as COPD. However, the reference equations that are available in the literature for these tests can not be used in our setting because of differences in population characteristics, lifestyle and climatic conditions.

The present study aims at determining equations for the 6-minute walk and incremental shuttle walk tests for Spanish population.

The study design is cross-sectional, multicenter study involving 18 centers (hospitals and universities) across Spain. Included a sample of 573 healthy subjects from 45 to 85 years which perform the exercise tests. This sample was stratified by gender, geographical area and age group. Analyses were performed separately for men and women. We studied the factors associated with exercise capacity by linear regression, and obtain the coefficients and the percentage of explained variance.

The study subjects were 48% male and 52% female, mean (SD) age of 62 (11) years, height 164 (10) cm, weight 74 (13) kg and body mass index (BMI) 27 (4) kg/m2.

The resulting reference equations explained 42% (men) and 50% (women) of the variance in the distance walked in the 6MWT, and 53% of the variance in the distance walked in the ISWT.

The derived reference equations for the 6MWT:

for men, 6MWT = 478 - (5.51 x age) + (4.15 x heightcm) - (1.78 x weightkg) - (1.18 x HRbaseline*), and
for women, 6MWT = 1107 - (5.78 x age) - (1.48 x weightkg) - (1.27 x HRbaseline*).

The derived reference equations for the ISWT:

for men, ISWT = 838 - (11.3 x age) + (5.87 x heightcm) - (3.44 x weightkg) - (3.16 x HRbaseline*), and
for women, ISWT = 1291 - (9.66 x age) - (2.9 x weightkg).

The equations derived from this study are applicable to Spanish population to predict the distance walked in the 6MWT and ISWT.

Results of this study have been awarded the Excellence Grant in Clinical Physiology and Exercise at the European Respiratory Society meeting 2015.