Section Days abstract book 2010.indd - RUB Research School ...

HSS_03
ASSOCIATION BETWEEN FUNCTIONAL TEST
RESULTS AND OBJECTIVELY MEASURED
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY IN ELDERLY PRIMARY CARE
PATIENTS
Claudio Bucchi, Timo Hinrichs, Anna Moschny, Juliane Volke, Petra Platen
Department of Sports Medicine and Sports Nutrition; Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44780
Bochum, Germany
e-mail: claudio.bucchi@rub.de
Purpose
Physical activity is essential in maintaining general health of elderly people. Lower body
strength and coordination are meant to be predictors of mobility and general physical activity.
The aim of this study was to assess the association between results of different functional tests
and objectively measured physical activity in elderly primary care patients.
Methods
Forty-eight community-dwelling persons (n=27 females, n=21 males) aged between
70 and 86 (mean 76.3) years were recruited through the surgeries of 6 different general
practitioners. All subjects were able to walk with (n=3) or without a walking aid (n=45). As a
measure of general physical activity subjects were instructed to wear a pedometer (with an
internal memory chip storing 7 days of data in 1-day epochs) close to the hip for the following
7 days (morning till evening). Mean number of steps per day (Steps/d) was calculated. If
possible, the following lower body functional tests were performed as measures of lower body
strength and coordination: Timed Up-and-Go (TUG: time to rise from a chair, walk 3 meters,
turn, walk back, sit down again), Chair Rising (CR: time to complete five repetitions of rising
from a chair, arms folded across the chest, and sitting down), Tandem Stand (TS: timed
attempt (maximum 10 sec) to maintain feet in the tandem position, heel of one foot directly in
front of the other foot), Tandem Walk (TW: step count of the attempt (maximum 8 steps) to
walk heel of one foot directly in front of the other foot). Spearman’s correlation was used to
assess the association between Steps/d and functional test results.
Results
All subjects (n=48) wore the pedometer for a minimum of 4 days (mean 6.6 days). Mean
Steps/d were 5492±3281 (409-14819) steps. The functional test results were (mean±SD):
TUG (n=48): 13.2±4.9 sec; CR (n=46): 16.6±6.5 sec; TS (n=48): 9.2±2.1 sec; TW (n=44)
5.3±2.9 steps. The following correlation coefficients were found between Steps/d and: TUG:
r=-0.55 (p