Gait and mobility assessment in cardio-respiratory conditions

This chapter focuses on the examination of gait and mobility parameters in patients with respiratory and cardiovascular conditions, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma, as well as coronary artery disease and heart failure. Emphasis is placed on the evaluation of the clinical validity of gait and mobility parameters, including physical activity levels, gait speed, cadence, step length, and step time. Specifically, the chapter reports on the difference in these measures between patients’ and healthy age-matched individuals, their prognostic capacity to predict clinically relevant outcomes, their sensitivity in detecting postintervention changes, and their ability to reflect clinically relevant constructs. Furthermore, this synthesis emphasises the importance of adopting standardised methodologies and extensively validating current, but most importantly novel gait and mobility parameters measured in real-world setting.