Sokas Daivaras, Paliakaitė Birutė, Rapalis Andrius, Marozas Vaidotas, Bailón Raquel, Petrėnas Andrius
Biomedical Engineering Institute, Kaunas University of Technology, Kaunas, Lithuania.
Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Kaunas University of Technology, Kaunas, Lithuania.
Front Physiol. 2021 Aug 12;12:706545. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2021.706545. eCollection 2021.
Exercise testing to assess the response to physical rehabilitation or lifestyle interventions is administered in clinics thus at best can be repeated only few times a year. This study explores a novel approach to collecting information on functional performance through walk tests, e.g., a 6-min walk test (6MWT), unintentionally performed in free-living activities. Walk tests are detected in step data provided by a wrist-worn device. Only those events of minute-to-minute variation in walking cadence, which is equal or lower than the empirically determined maximal SD (e.g., 5-steps), are considered as walk test candidates. Out of detected walk tests within the non-overlapping sliding time interval (e.g., 1-week), the one with the largest number of steps is chosen as the most representative. This approach is studied on a cohort of 99 subjects, assigned to the groups of patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD) and healthy subjects below and over 40-years-old, who were asked to wear the device while maintaining their usual physical activity regimen. The total wear time was 8,864 subject-days after excluding the intervals of occasionally discontinued monitoring. About 82% (23/28) of patients with CVD and 88% (21/24) of healthy subjects over 40-years-old had at least a single 6MWT over the 1st month of monitoring. About 52% of patients with CVD (12/23) and 91% (19/21) of healthy subjects over 40-years-old exceeded 500 m. Patients with CVD, on average, walked 46 m shorter 6MWT distance ( = 0.04) compared to healthy subjects. Unintentional walk testing is feasible and could be valuable for repeated assessment of functional performance outside the clinical setting.
用于评估身体康复或生活方式干预反应的运动测试在诊所进行，因此一年最多只能重复进行几次。本研究探索了一种通过步行测试收集功能表现信息的新方法，例如在自由生活活动中无意进行的6分钟步行测试（6MWT）。步行测试在腕戴设备提供的步数数据中被检测到。只有那些步行节奏每分钟变化等于或低于经验确定的最大标准差（例如5步）的事件才被视为步行测试候选事件。在非重叠滑动时间间隔（例如1周）内检测到的步行测试中，步数最多的那个被选为最具代表性的测试。该方法在99名受试者的队列中进行了研究，这些受试者被分为心血管疾病（CVD）患者组以及40岁以下和40岁以上的健康受试者组，要求他们在保持日常身体活动方案的同时佩戴该设备。排除偶尔中断监测的时间段后，总佩戴时间为8864受试者日。在监测的第一个月，约82%（23/28）的CVD患者和88%（21/24）的40岁以上健康受试者至少进行了一次6MWT。约52%的CVD患者（12/23）和91%（19/21）的40岁以上健康受试者超过了500米。与健康受试者相比，CVD患者的6MWT平均距离短46米（ = 0.04）。无意的步行测试是可行的，对于在临床环境之外重复评估功能表现可能具有重要价值。
