Thursday 20 October 2011

The ‘Timed Get-Up-And-Go’ test revisited: Measurement of the component tasks. Wall, J. Bell, C. Campbell, S and Davis, J.

The aim of the study was to compare the different results between the ‘Timed Get-Up-And-Go’ (TGUG) test and the ‘Expanded Timed Get-Up-And-Go’ (ETGUG) test on 3 groups. The TGUG only measures the time of the movement as a whole whereas the ETGUG could measure the component tasks of the test.

3 groups of 10 subjects participated on the study. Group 1 classified as the young control group aged between 19 and 29 years with a mean age of 25.5. Group 2 were classified as the elderly control group who were aged 65 and over with a mean age score of 72.7 years. Group 3 were classified as the at risk elderly group who were aged over 65 and had a mean age of 75.8 years. All of these subjects were receiving physical therapy, had a history of falls in the past two years or had been treated for gait pathologies or balance disorders.

The subjects all had to complete the ‘Timed Get-Up-And-Go’ test first. This involved standing up from a chair (seat height 46cm) and walking 3 meters at a normal pace, turning around walking back and returning to the seated position. The second test they all completed was the ‘Expanded Timed Get-Up-And-Go’ test. This involved them walking 10 meters so that component tasks could be timed using a multimemory stopwatch. The stopwatch was pressed at the following events: a) standing upright b) as the subject passed the 2m mark c) as the subject passed the 8m mark d) as the subject passes the 8m mark returning and e) as the subject passed the 2m mark returning.

The results displayed no significant differences in the times from the TGUG between the young control group and elderly control group. The young control group’s mean time was 7.36s. The mean time for the elderly control group was 8.74s and the at risk elderly group had a mean time of 18.14s to complete the task. Similar results were found for the ETGUG test. The mean time for the young control group was 15.36s, the elderly control group was 19.095s and the at risk elderly group was 34.52s. A significant difference was found between the young and at risk group and the elderly and the at risk group for every component task of the test. Both control groups were found to be significantly faster at each stage than the at risk group.

All the young and elderly control participants completed the TGUG test in less than 10 seconds which is consistent with previous findings therefore showing they are freely independent in physical mobility. In both of the tests it was found the elderly group and the at risk elderly group had difficulty standing up from the chair. Therefore it has been suggested that only this measure could be used in future research to predict a patient’s risk of falling. Additional research is needed to determine correlations between the increased time for specific component tasks and a decreased functional mobility.

1 comment:

  1. Stopwatches are known to be fairly inaccurate due to human error and the quality of the stopwatch. What would you do to increase the accuracy of the times taken. Especially in the ETGUG test where there are 5 times to be taken.

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