Evaluation of Sensewear Armband to estimate energy expenditure during wheelchair propulsion

Abstract

The objective of the study was to determine if SenseWear Armband (SWA) is a valid instrument to estimate energy expenditure during wheelchair propulsion. Thirty healthy, adult, non-wheelchair users (16 male, 14 female) performed wheelchair propulsion on a treadmill at six workloads, differing in angle and speed. Energy expenditure was measured by both SWA and indirect calorimetry. During wheelchair propulsion without incline, mean differences and limits of agreement from the Bland–Altman plots were 9.8 ± 12.8, 10.9 ± 10.0 and 10.7 ± 11.4 kJ/min for 4, 6 and 8 km/h, respectively. With an inclination of 1°, mean differences and limits of agreement were 7.4 ± 8.8 and 4.5 ± 9.6 kJ/min for 4 and 6 km/h, respectively. With an inclination of 2° and a speed of 4 km/h, mean difference and limits of agreement was 1.4 ± 10.5 kJ/min. There were no statistical agreement (p > 0.05) between SWA and indirect calorimetry during wheelchair propulsion without incline. During wheelchair propulsion with inclination the intra-class correlation (ICC) was 0.36–0.50, which implies that 36–50% of the variance observed was explained by differences among individuals (p < 0.05). The use of SWA to estimate energy expenditure during wheelchair propulsion is not recommended using the existing algorithms.

Key words::

• indirect calorimetry
• Sense Wear Armband
• validity

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.