Home-based walking exercises produced better outcomes for older adults with peripheral artery disease than supervised treadmill exercise, according to a recent analysis of clinical trials.
The new study, led by the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, sought to determine whether older adults with PAD showed greater improvement in home-based exercise in six-minute walk distance than those with supervised treadmill exercise. The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.
For their study, the researchers analyzed data of 719 participants from five randomized clinical trials of exercise for PAD.
The supervised treadmill exercise intervention consisted of treadmill exercise in the presence of an exercise physiologist, three days a week for up to 50 minutes per session, whereas the home-based walking exercise consisted of a behavioral intervention in which a coach helped participants walk for exercise in or around the home for up to five days per week for 50 minutes per session.
The investigators found that participants who performed home-based walking exercises showed significantly greater improvement in six-minute walking distance than those with the supervised treadmill exercise. Participants in the home-based walking exercise group, however, did not show significant improvement in their treadmill walking distance, the study found.
The researchers said that the findings suggest that regular home-based walking exercises may have more benefits for people with PAD than less frequent supervised interventions for which patients must visit a facility or exercise center.
“Compared with supervised exercise, home-based walking exercise was associated with greater improvement in six-minute walk distance in people with PAD,” the authors concluded. “These findings support home-based walking exercise as a first-line therapy for walking limitations in PAD.”
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