Objective measurement of gait and physical activity after stroke
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Reliability of a single tri-axial accelerometer for quantifying gait characteristics and physical activity in people with stroke
IRAS ID
186602
Contact name
Sarah A Moore
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 6 months, 4 days
Research summary
Stroke affects approximately 152,000 people in the UK each year and is the leading cause of long-term adult disability. Increasing physical activity (PA) and improving gait could potentially improve health and well-being post-stroke. At present there is no consistent approach to measuring PA and gait post-stroke making comparison of research and clinical findings problematic. There are also currently no tools available that could measure both physical activity and gait characteristics post-stroke.
Previous studies have used a variety of methods to determine changes in PA post-stroke including self-report questionnaires, observation, laboratory measures, accelerometers, measurement of energy expenditure and heart rate monitoring. Accelerometers are a cheap and effective method of capturing rich, objective, daily physical activity data. Alongside capturing basic step count, accelerometers can be used to measure bouts of walking, sedentary time, posture and transitions between postures. At present however, accelerometers do not capture quality of movement and gait characteristics. As improvement in gait is the most commonly cited goal post-stroke, an outcome tool that measures both physical activity levels and quality of gait in the community may prove a powerful tool.
Recent work in healthy older adults and Parkinson’s disease has demonstrated accelerometers, alongside measuring physical activity, can accurately capture a comprehensive battery of gait characteristics in the community. Whether accelerometers could be used to capture similar data in the stroke population has yet to be established. Individuals with stroke present with unique movement disorders that impact on gait (e.g. hemiplegia and ataxia). Whether accelerometers can accurately measure the characteristics of stroke-related gait deficits has yet to be determined. Using accelerometers to explore gait could potentially reduce laboratory time costs and capture ‘real world’ data. If this tool were adopted in stroke, other disease groups and the healthy population it would also aid comparison of research and clinical data.
REC name
North West - Greater Manchester West Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/NW/0731
Date of REC Opinion
8 Sep 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion