The Chester step test is a reproducible tool to assess exercise capacity and exertional desaturation in post-COVID-19 patients
Author
Publication date
2022-12Abstract
Many people recovering from an acute episode of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) experience prolonged symptoms. Exercise testing is a feasible and cost-effective option for assessing exercise tolerance, fatigue, and dyspnea related to effort. Being that the Chester step test (CST) is a progressive, submaximal test for predicting aerobic capacity, it could be a good option to explore. This study aimed to determine the reproducibility of CST for assessing exertional desaturation and exercise capacity in patients post-COVID-19 disease. A cross-sectional study was conducted on post-COVID-19 patients. Two attempts of the CST were performed. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was used to assess agreement between the two tests. Forty-two symptomatic post-COVID-19 patients were included, the mean age was 53.8 ± 10.3 years, and 52% were female. There was no significant difference between both tests (p = 0.896). Twenty-four percent of participants (10 cases) had a clinically significant decrease in SpO2 at the first assessment, compared to 30.1% (13 cases) at the second, with no significant difference. An ICC of 0.993 (95% CI: 0.987 to 0.996) was obtained for the total number of steps in the CST.
Document Type
Article
Document version
Published version
Language
English
Keywords
COVID-19 (Malaltia)
Chester Step Test (CST)
Rendiment (Esports)
Exercici
Rehabilitació
Pages
6 p.
Publisher
MDPI
Is part of
Healthcare, 2023, 11(1), 51
Grant agreement number
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/MINECO/ISCIII i ERDF/PI21/0555
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
Rights
© L'autor/a
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/