6MWT on a new self-paced treadmill system compared with overground

Abstract

The 6-min walk test (6MWT) is a useful tool for clinicians and researchers to estimate gait performance and fatigue affecting functional mobility. A modified 6MWT administered on a treadmill (TM) can be an efficient, space-saving alternative to perform the 6MWT. The aim of this study was to investigate if a 6MWT on a self-paced (SP) TM produced similar results compared to an overground (OG) 6MWT among healthy participants with the hypothesis that users would demonstrate similar gait parameters. The second aim was to assess the reliability of SP TM sessions with the hypothesis that gait parameters would be reliable. Twelve healthy young adults performed one OG 6MWT and two SP TM 6MWTs, with the TM tests performed on two different testing days. The OG 6MWTs were conducted along a 20 m corridor with a portable optometric system. The SP TM 6MWTs were performed using a dual-belt instrumented TM with speed controlled by feedback from a LIDAR sensor. In the OG condition, participants walked 664.8 m ± 48.9 m when the standard method was used to calculate distance and 721.3 m ± 56.2 m with an average-speed-based estimation of distance, which corrects for U-turns. For the SP TM 6MWT, they covered 729.4 m ± 45.8 m in the first session and 727.4 m ± 56.0 m in the second session. Gait parameters showed good to excellent within- and between-day reliability on the adaptive TM. Gait parameters were similar between modalities. A significant difference in the 6MWT distance was found between modalities. This is attributable to the U-turns, because a comparison between TM 6MWT distance and the average-speed-based estimation of the distance for the OG modality showed no significant difference. However, this system produced similar spatiotemporal gait parameters among participants compared to OG.