PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Houchen-Wolloff, Linzy
AU  - Daynes, Enya
AU  - Watt, Amye
AU  - Chaplin, Emma
AU  - Gardiner, Nikki
AU  - Singh, Sally
TI  - Which functional outcome measures can we use as a surrogate for exercise capacity during remote cardiopulmonary rehabilitation assessments? A rapid narrative review
AID  - 10.1183/23120541.00526-2020
DP  - 2020 Oct 01
TA  - ERJ Open Research
PG  - 00526-2020
VI  - 6
IP  - 4
4099  - http://openres.ersjournals.com/content/6/4/00526-2020.short
4100  - http://openres.ersjournals.com/content/6/4/00526-2020.full
SO  - erjor2020 Oct 01; 6
AB  - Introduction The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has seen many cardiopulmonary rehabilitation services delivering programmes remotely. One area of concern is how to assess exercise capacity when a supervised exercise test is not possible. The aim of this review was to examine the relationship between functional exercise tests and recommended exercise tests for cardiopulmonary rehabilitation.Methods A rapid narrative review was carried out. Searches were conducted by two of the study authors. The study had the following features. Participants: adults, all with long-term conditions; intervention: any/none; outcome: Duke activity status index (DASI), sit to stand (STS, 30 s, 1 min and 5 repetitions), short physical performance battery (SPPB), 4-metre gait speed (4MGS) or step test (Chester/others) AND directly compared to one of the recommended exercise tests for cardiopulmonary rehabilitation: 6-min walk test (6MWT), incremental shuttle walk test (ISWT) or cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET) in terms of reporting agreement/correlation; Study design: primary research only, controlled trials or observational studies.Results Sixteen articles out of 249 screened were included (n=2271 patients). Overall, there were weak–strong correlations for the included tests with a recommended exercise test (r=0.38–0.85). There were few reported issues with feasibility or safety of the tests. However, all tests were supervised in a clinical setting. The test that had the highest correlation with the field walking test was the 4MGS with the ISWT (r=0.78) and with the 6MWT (r=0.85).Discussion The 4MGS has the highest correlation with routine measures of exercise tolerance. However, it may be difficult to standardise in a remote assessment or to prescribe exercise from. Clinicians should strive for face-to-face standardised exercise tests where possible to be able to guide exercise prescription.Clinicians should strive for face-to-face standardised exercise tests where possible to be able to guide exercise prescription https://bit.ly/34saiQR