Reproducibility of functional tests in peripheral arterial disease

Abstract

This study aimed at evaluating the reproducibility of two lower-limb functional tests in patients with peripheral arterial disease. The chair-stand (CST) and tip-toe (TTT) tests were applied twice to 14 volunteers with peripheral arterial disease by three examiners with a one-minute interval between them and 15 minutes between test and retest. Most participants presented difficulties in TTT, which has then been slightly adjusted. Data were statistically analysed; inter-examiner degree of agreement was assessed by means of the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), with significance level set at ±<5%. All correlations were found to be statistically significant. CST showed high both inter-examiner reproducibility (test ICC=0.904, retest ICC=0.857) and intra-examiner. The same applies to TTT (inter examiner test ICC=0.824, retest ICC=0.941). The Pearson correlation between the mean of the three examiners in CST and the mean in TTT was 0.651 at test and 0.609 at retest. Both tests are thus reliable and viable for clinical practice. However, it is still to be assessed whether these tests are sensitive to changes that might arouse from the disease, hence being useful for patient follow-up.