Abstract
Objective
To determine whether differences could be detected in mobility outcomes during community
mobility and home mobility tasks according to type of mobility assistive device.
Design
Randomized, repeated measures.
Setting
Community mobility task: traversing 341.4m between the rehabilitation clinic and hospital
entrance; home mobility task: traversing 39m into and out of a patient training bathroom
and bedroom.
Participants
Community-dwelling, cognitively intact ambulatory veterans (N=59) who used a mobility
device within the 14 days prior to the study.
Interventions
Participants tested 3 types of mobility assistive devices with wheels: 4-wheeled walker
(WW), manual wheelchair (MWC), and powered wheelchair (PWC). The first and last devices
used by each participant were randomly assigned as either MWC or WW. The PWC was always
the second device.
Main Outcomes Measures
Speed (m/s), collisions (total), fatigue (0–10 Likert scale), and pain (0–10 Likert
scale, diagram).
Results
The community mobility task was performed with all 3 devices by 52 (88%) veterans,
and the home mobility task was performed with all 3 devices by 53 (90%) participants.
In each task, 28 participants used the WW and 28 participants used the MWC as the
final device. In the community mobility task, statistically significant differences
(P<.05) were seen with ≥1 device comparison for all studied outcomes (eg, standardized
mean difference for the MWC compared with the PWC showed −.67 fewer collisions for
the MWC). In the home mobility task, speed, collisions, and fatigue showed statistically
significant (P<.05) device-related differences (eg, standardized mean difference for the WW compared
with the MWC showed −.88 fewer collisions for the WW).
Conclusions
We found statistically significant and substantively different effects from 3 commonly
used mobility assistive devices with wheels on diverse mobility outcomes when used
in typical community mobility and home mobility tasks, providing proof of concept
support for a research methodology applicable to comparative outcome studies of diverse
mobility aids.
Keywords
List of abbreviations:
MWC (manual wheelchair), PWC (powered wheelchair), SMD (standardized mean difference), WW (wheeled walker)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: September 14, 2014
Footnotes
Supported by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Wheeled Mobility (grant no. H133E030035-04).
Disclosures: none.
Identification
Copyright
© 2015 American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
