Evaluation of daily activity in patients with COPD

Background: Recently we could show that the daily activity in patients with hypercapnic respirator failure as judged by the total amount of movements per day increased by 120% after 3 months of non-invasive mechancal ventilat ion. This study was designed to evaluate the reproducibility of the result of a movement detector in measuring daily activity of patients with COPD. Patients and Methods: 25 outpatients (11 females, 56 +/- 12 years old) with stable non-hypercapnic COPD (FEV1 = 47 +/- 9% predicted) were examined twi ce during a 7 days lasting intervall, one month apert using a pedometer. Results and Conclusion. The repeatability of the activity counts in the non -hypercapnic COPD patients was high (1st study period: 3 781 +/- 2 320 move ments/d, 2nd study period: 3 626 +/- 2 149 movements/d) and in these patien ts activity correlated significantly with FEV1 (r = 0.54, p = 0.006).