Cardiovascular and functional repercussions of a treadmill training protocol with different inclinations in individuals with stroke: a randomized clinical trial
Rehabilitation, Aerobic exercise, Physiotherapy
Treadmill training has been widely used for the rehabilitation of gait in patients with stroke. However, there is still a scarcity of studies on aerobic training protocols using inclined treadmills, designed to ensure the cardiovascular safety of these subjects during training. Objective: To evaluate the safety of an inclined treadmill training protocol on cardiovascular variables in individuals with chronic stroke. Methodology: This is a randomized, blinded clinical trial, in which 36 individuals with stroke sequelae for more than six months, between 20 to 70 years of age and both sexes, will be randomly distributed in the Control Group (CG), in which the patients will perform the gait training on a treadmill without inclination, Experimental Group 1 (GE1), in which the training on the treadmill will be done with 5% inclination and Experimental Group 2 (GE2), in which the training on the treadmill will be done with 10% inclination. The training sessions will be 30 minutes long, with frequency of 3 times a week, for 6 weeks, totaling 18 sessions. Participants will be evaluated immediately before, during and after each training session for cardiovascular parameters (heart rate [HR], blood pressure [BP]) and metabolic equivalents - METS. They will also be evaluated for functional variables, such as gait speed and distance covered on the treadmill, in each session. Data from the 1st, 9th and 18th sessions were compared between groups using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) mixed with repeated measures (α = 5%). Results: According to ANOVA, there was no time*group interaction in any of the cardiovascular outcomes (HR, BP and METs), as well as for the functional outcomes. However, in relation to the PAM variable and METs, there seems to have been an effect of time over the training sessions (F = 3.482; P = 0.040) (F = 22.844; P<0.01). Similar time effect could be observed about the outcomes: gait speed and distance covered (F = 21.618
P<0.001; F = 22.402; P<0.001), without time * group interaction for these variables.