Heart rate recovery after 6 minute walk test in normal healthy individuals

Heart rate recovery after graded exercise is one of the commonly used techniques that reflects the autonomic activity and predicts cardiovascular events and mortality, not only in cardiovascular system disorders, but also in various systemic disorders. Hence, this study was taken up to provide a normative data for heart rate recovery after submaximal exercise in normal healthy individuals so that patients with mild affection can be identified at much early stage.

In this cross sectional analytical study 100 patients in the age group of 40–60 years were included and divided age and gender wise in a group of 25(40-50years & 51-60years) and 50(40–60F&M) respectively. Subjects with visual ailments, any cardio vascular or respiratory disease, fractures or neurological problems which may interfere with the walking ability were excluded from the study. The ethical clearance was obtained from IEC of DVVPF's COPT for study. After ethical clearance, a written informed consent was obtained from participants, the whole procedure was explained and human activity profile questionnaire was filled by the patients.

The mean of all the parameters was calculated and then the distance walked was correlated with all the parameters to determine its significance through nonparametric correlation in age wise and gender wise classification. When the means of the HRR1 were compared in the age group of 40–50F (6.24±2.818) & 51–60F (9.32±3.827) the p value was found to be 0.0022 which was considered very significant. Also, when the distance was correlated with the HRR1 in the age group of 40–60F, the p value (0.0472) was found to be significant.

It is concluded that there was a significant relationship between the distance covered and the HRR1 in the age group of 40–60 years of females.