Treadmill training improves fitness reserve in chronic stroke patients

Macko RF, Smith GV, Dobrovolny CL, Sorkin JD, Goldberg AP, Silver KH. Treadmill training improves fitness reserve in chronic stroke patients. Arch Phys Med Rehabil 2001;82:879-84. Objective: To investigate the hypothesis that treadmill training will improve peak fitness, while lowering the energy cost of hemiparetic gait in chronic stroke patients. Design: Noncontrolled exercise intervention study with repeated-measures analysis. Setting: Hospital-based senior exercise research center. Participants: Twenty-three patients (mean age ± standard deviation [SD] 67 ± 8yr) with chronic hemiparetic gait after remote (>6mo) ischemic stroke. Intervention: Three 40-minute sessions of treadmill exercise weekly for 6 months. Main Outcome Measures: Peak exercise capacity (VO2peak) and rate of oxygen consumption during submaximal effort treadmill walking (economy of gait) by open circuit spirometry and ambulatory workload capacity before and after 3 and 6 months of training. Results: Patients who completed 3 months of training (n = 21) increased their VO2peak ± SD from 15.4 ± 2.9mL · kg−1 · min−1 to 17.0 ± 4.4mL · kg−1 · min−1 (p