Desenvolvimento de uma metodologia para testes ergométricos em pessoas com deficiência de membros inferiores

Abstract

People with physical disabilities recently had a great reintegration into society, this achievement together with new medical treatments, medicines and sports provided an increase in life expectancy. The sports practice as large contributor, requires special attention because it must be performed from prior evaluations to make suitable or not their realization. The heart is the main affected organ, therefore, cardiovascular evaluation is the prior way to diagnose diseases related to this.The ergometric test is the analysis most commonly used to diagnose an anomaly, however its performance in people with disabilities still uses adaptation in protocols and ergometers developed for people without disabilities.Therefore, it was proposed to develop a methodology for these people. Based on energy expenditure (MET) and in a specific ergometer for wheelchair, in consideration of based on each individual\'s physiological parameters. Such action was direct to the elimination of adjustments and minimization of results, sometimes not relevant to the real patient\'s condition. For the generation of such a protocol was created an app with a written algorithm in Matlab® program language. The app performs the most appropriate choice of the work to be overcome by each person during testing. Moreover, this paper also showed the direction to be taken for the improvement of ergometers of wheelchairs, in addition to a methodology that can be adopted for the development of protocols for other types of ergometers. In summary, the protocol/methodology proposed together with ergometers suitable for people with disabilities, will allow to perform more proper test for people with lower limb disabilities.