Oxygen Costs of the Incremental Shuttle Walk Test in Cardiac Rehabilitation Participants: An Historical and Contemporary Analysis.

Background: The incremental shuttle walk test (ISWT) is a standardised assessment for cardiac rehabilitation. Three studies have reported oxygen costs (VO)/metabolic equivalents (METs) of the ISWT. In spite of classic representations from these studies graphically showing curvilinear VO responses to incremented walking speeds, linear regression techniques (also used by the American College of Sports Medicine [ACSM]) have been used to estimate VO.

Reference values for the incremental shuttle walk test in patients with cardiovascular disease entering exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation.

The incremental shuttle walk test (ISWT) is used to assess functional capacity of patients entering cardiac rehabilitation. Factors such as age and sex account for a proportion of the variance in test performance in healthy individuals but there are no reference values for patients with cardiovascular disease. The aim of this study was to produce reference values for the ISWT.