To determine the validity of the 6-minute walk test (6MWT) as an outcome measure to evaluate walking capacity in ambulatory patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
The timed up and go (TUG) test evaluates walking speed and mobility [ 51].
To evaluate walking ability, we will further perform the Timed Up-and-Go test (TUG, [ 52]) and the 10 Meter Walk Test (10MWT, [ 48]).
Sucato et al. (2010) evaluated walking in patients with bilateral symptomatic hip dysplasia and reported lower walking speed in the patients than in healthy controls.
Previous studies have evaluated walking and standing only, but most of these young patients with hip dysplasia have higher expectations than just to be able to walk.
After the baseline home interview, participants aged ≤85 were invited to the study centre in 1999-2001, weere we quantitatively evaluated walking speed.
We used the POMA [ 38] to perform a sample size calculation, because the POMA is a generic and widely used test to evaluate walking ability and has been associated with risk of falling [ 39, 40].
The following eleven spatial and temporal gait measurements were evaluated: Walking speed (cm/s), Step length (cm), Stride length (cm), Base of support (cm), Step time (s), Stride time (s), Swing time (s), Stance time (s), Single support time (s), Double support time (s), and Toe in toe out (deg).
If an individual's peak VO2 is not known, we recommend utilizing the equation only for people with moderate-to-severe heart or lung disease, excluding people whose 6 MWD is above 600 meters, as few of the patients we evaluated walked further than this and this value would estimate a peak VO2 of about 20 ml/kg/min.
