Aline Mendes Gerage,1 Marilia de Almeida Correia,2 Paulo Mesquita Longano de Oliveira,2 Aline Cabral Palmeira,3 Wagner Jorge Ribeiro Domingues,4 Antônio Eduardo Zeratti,5 Pedro Puech-Leão,5 Nelson Wolosker,3 Raphael Mendes Ritti-Dias,2 and Gabriel Grizzo Cucato3 . Arq Bras Cardiol. 2019 Sep; 113(3): 410–416. doi: 10.5935/abc.20190142

This cross-sectional study included 174 PAD patients with intermittent claudication symptoms. Patients were submitted to clinical, hemodynamic and functional evaluations. Physical activity was objectively measured by an accelerometer, and the time spent in sedentary, low-light, high-light and moderate-vigorous physical activities (MVPA) were obtained. Descriptive analysis was performed to summarize patient data and binary logistic regression was used to test the crude and adjusted associations between adherence to physical activity recommendation and sociodemographic and clinical factors. For all the statistical analyses, significance was accepted at p < 0.05.

Results

Patients spent in average of 640 ± 121 min/day, 269 ± 94 min/day, 36 ± 27 min/day and 15 ± 16 min/day in sedentary, low-light, high-light and MVPA, respectively. The prevalence of patients who achieved physical activity recommendations was 3.4%. After adjustment for confounders, a significant inverse association was observed between adherence to physical activity recommendation and age (OR = 0.925; p = 0.004), while time of disease, ankle brachial index and total walking distance were not associated with this adherence criteria (p > 0.05).

Conclusion

The patterns of physical activity of PAD patients are characterized by a large amount of time spent in sedentary behaviors and a low engagement in MVPA. Younger patients, regardless of the clinical and functional factors, were more likely to meet the current physical activity recommendations.