Abstract
The aerobic capacity of paraplegics and quadriplegics was measured during continuous incremental exercises until exhaustion on an arm crank ergometer. Subjects were 19 male patients with cervical spinal cord injury (SCI-C group: mean time since injury, 21.6 months), and 30 male patients with thoracic or lumbar spinal cord injury (SCI-TL group: mean time since injury, 63.3 months). Spinal cord injured subjects also participated in a field test (20 m and 3-minute wheelchair propulsion run test). Twenty meter run time and 3-minute run distance were measured. The relationship between these field tests and the peak oxygen consumption (peak VO2) was evaluated. To find the most important predictor variables of peak VO2, the correlation coefficients of age, time since injury, grip strength, 20 m run time, and 3-minute run distance against peak VO2 were calculated. Step-wise multiple regression analysis showed that the regression of peak VO2 plotted against 3-minute run distance yielded the following equatin; Peak VO2 (ml/kg/min) = 0.0266 × [3-minute run distance (m) ] + 5.320 (R = 0.7247; p < 0.05) in SCI-C group; Peak VO2 (ml/kg/min) = 0.0595 × [3-minute run distance (m) ] - 2.3321 (R = 0.8385; p < 0.05) in SCI-TL group. A comparison of actual peak VO2 and predicted peak VO2 described above was made in another 8 male quadriplegics and 8 male paraplegics. The correlation coefficients between actual peak VO2 and predicted peak VO2 in quadriplegics and paraplegics were significantly high{r = 0.7128 (p = 0.0472) , r = 0.9039 (p = 0.0021) respectively}.
