6 Minute Walk Test

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2.4 Six minute walking test: Six minute walk test was developed in 1963 by Balke to evaluate functional capacity. Different variations of the timed walk have been tested, and the six minute timed walk was recommended given its reproducibility and ease of administration compared to longer timed tests. A functional test might be a more valuable tool& cost effective (Nixon et al., 1992) for measuring cardio respiratory fitness in the population and detecting change in cardio respiratory fitness. One of the first functional or field test measures described was a 12minute run (Cooper et al., 1968) in which the Vo2max from a treadmill test was compared to the run data of 11 5 healthy US Air Force male officers and airmen. A high correlation (0.897) was found between the two tests. It was concluded that the…show more content…
The 12-minute run had the advantage of being simple and inexpensive to carry out. However, a 12-minute walk/run is time consuming and can be exhaustive. Therefore walking tests of 2, 6- and I2 minute durations were compared for their ability to assess exercise tolerance (capacity) in patients with stable chronic air flow obstruction (Butland et al., 1982). High correlation coefficients were found between the 2-minute, 6-minute and 12-minute tests. It was concluded that any of the three tests could be chosen to assess exercise tolerance but that the longer (12minute) walk test discriminated better than those of shorter duration. ( Guyatt et al., 1985) investigated the effect of encouragement on the 6-minute walk test (6-MWT) performance in patients with chronic heart failure and chronic lung disease. It was found that the 6-MWT was safe and highly acceptable to patients but required two practice walks in order to provide a stable third walk. Although the 6-MWT correlated significantly with a maximal exercise capacity test and a functional status test, these correlations were reported as only low to moderate. Furthermore, encouragement was

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