Knee extensor muscle strength as a predictor of peak oxygen uptake in patients with heart disease.
Tsubasa Yokote, Hidenobu Koga, Kyohei Eriguchi and 1 others
PMID 32273648WHAT IT FOUND
Higher knee strength measured by handheld dynamometer went with higher peak oxygen uptake in 45 heart disease patients.
A cutoff of 0.46 kgf/kg corresponded to 5 METs.
Key findings
01Knee extensor muscle strength was significantly positively associated with peak oxygen uptake after adjusting for age, sex, and VE/VCO2 slope.
02The optimal knee strength cutoff for peak oxygen uptake at 5 METs was 0.46 kgf/kg, with 92.86% sensitivity and 76.47% specificity.
03The area under the ROC curve for knee strength predicting peak oxygen uptake at 5 METs was 0.86.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The design was retrospective and cross-sectional, so it cannot show that changing knee strength will change peak oxygen uptake. Only 45 patients were studied, and the paper did not test whether the cutoff works differently for ischemic versus non-ischemic heart disease, by age, or by sex. All participants could walk independently, so the cutoff may not apply to patients who are less mobile. The study did not compare knee strength with other measures such as handgrip strength.
Declared interests
No funding from public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors; authors declared no conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that improving knee strength will improve peak oxygen uptake. This was a retrospective cross-sectional association study in 45 patients, not an intervention trial.