A PILOT STUDY ON CORRELATION BETWEEN SIX-MINUTE WALK TEST AND BREATH HOLDING TIME TEST BETWEEN NORMOTENSIVE AND HYPERTENSIVE INDIVIDUALS

This study wants to check efficiency of breath holding time in comparison with six-minute walk test as a parameter of physical fitness in normotensive and hypersensitive individuals. Six-minute walk test is widely used sub- maximal intensity exercise test. This test is easy to perform, inexpensive, easily repeated. It is widely popular for cardiorespiratory assessment. Measurement of functional exercise capacity is required in many conditions like chronic obstructive diseases, cardiac failure etc. six-minute walk test is a validated tool for measurement of functional exercise capacity. It is good for determining prognosis in major pulmonary surgeries, COPD, cardiac failure, pulmonary hypertension etc. Six-minute walk test needs more space and time to be performed. Also, it is quite ineffective for patients with walking disabilities. Use of breath holding time test instead of six-minute walk test will fasten the process of cardio-respiratory evaluation since it is even more easy to perform and requires lesser time as well as space. Here we compared the two tests among the population of 151 in which 73 were normotensive individuals while 78 were found to be hypertensive. The comparison between the two tests among these two populations was done to see whether the two tests are linearly correlated to each other in spite of variations in the status of blood pressure. It was found that the two tests are linearly correlated in the normotensive group but hypertensive population did not show any such correlation. Overall population showed moderated correlation between the two tests.