A growing body of evidence suggests that in individuals with chronic lung disease their walk speed is related to their daily function and quality of life. It is possible to assess their usual (routine) and fast walking speeds by getting them to walk in a flat hallway. In individuals with chronic lung disease, we anticipate that their usual walk speed will be helpful in exercise prescription and use in multidimensional scoring systems. However, it is important to first determine the measurement properties of these two walk speeds.
Study Type
OBSERVATIONAL
Enrollment
29
Stable patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease will demonstrate their usual and fast walking speeds over a 30 m course, with speed calculated over the middle 10 m using optical sensors. The test will be repeated after a 5 minute rest; this procedure will then be repeated on two subsequent days, at the same time of day, within one week.
Westpark Health Care Centre
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Coefficient of repeatability for usual and fast walk speeds
Participants will be asked to demonstrate their usual and fast walk speeds over the middle 10 meters of a 30 meter straight track using optical sensors and a hand-held stopwatch. Participants will be instructed to walk at their 'usual' and 'fast' speeds as standardized instructions. The walk test will be repeated after a 5 minute rest and then repeated on two subsequent days, at the same time of day, within one week. This will be simply observational in nature with no planned intervention aside for controlling walking environment. The primary outcome is going to report a change in walk speeds from baseline and at 1 and 2 days using repeated measures as described by Bland and Altman (reference below).
Time frame: At baseline and over 1 week period.
Agreement in walk speeds between optical sensors and stopwatch
Assess agreement between the use of optical sensors and stop watch time for the usual and fast walk speeds.
Time frame: Baseline and over 1 week of testing.
Agreement in the Bode Index using six minute walk distance and usual walk speed.
To assess agreement in the calculated Bode Index using the six minute walk distance versus estimated usual walk speed distance over 6 minutes.
Time frame: Baseline
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