Serial Assessment Of The Cardiorespiratory Fitness Vital Sign: Prognostic Significance One Year Post Cardiac Rehabilitation

PURPOSE: Walking speed tests are valid tools for predicting functional independence outcomes, however research has not yet agreed on their predictive ability for cardiovascular disease events. There are a range of distances used for walking speed tests, which generates a gap in knowledge and questions the test‘s accuracy and clinical significance. The purpose of the current study was to determine an optimal distance to calculate gait speed that can be used to standardize walking tests in clinical settings. METHODS: Participants walked at their normal gait speed for 20m through Brower timing gates set up at the starting line and at 5m, 10m, and 20m. Speeds from 0-5m, 5-10m, and 10-20m were compared using a linear mixed effect model. RESULTS: The average speed for 0-5m segment was 1.361 m/s, 5-10m was 1.449 m/s, and the 10-20m average speed was 1.467 m/s. Comparing 0-5m to 5-10m, the estimated difference was 0.088 m/s with a 95% CI between 0.062-0.079 m/s with a p-value < 0.0001. Comparing 0-5m to 10-20m, the estimated difference was 0.106 m/s with a p-value of <0.0001. The estimated 510m to 10-20m difference was 0.018 m/s with a p-value of 0.18. CONCLUSIONS: The most efficient distance to measure gait speed is between 5-10 meters of a 15 meter walk test to provide room for acceleration and deceleration. Using a walk speed test under 5 meters is not advised because people are still accelerating and have not achieved stable speed.