Responsiveness of Various Exercise-Testing Protocols to Therapeutic Interventions in COPD

Table 1

Characteristics of exercise testing protocols in COPD.

Characteristics	Incremental exercise tests			Constant work load exercise tests				Self-paced tests
	Incremental cycle exercise	Incremental treadmill exercise	ISWT	CET	ESWT	Constant work rate treadmill test	3-min walk and step test	6MWT	6MST
Reproducibility	+	?	?	+++	+	?	+	+	+
Discriminative properties	+++	?	?	?	?	?	?	+++	?
Responsiveness	±	?	±	+++	++	?	?	±	?
MID values	+5–10 W; [40, 41]	?	+48 m; [42]	+100–200 s; [10, 43]	+65 s or +95 m; [7]	?	?	+25–54 m; [17, 40, 44]	?

With ISWT: Incremental Shuttle Walking Test, CET; Cycle Endurance Test, ESWT: Endurance shuttle Walking Test, 6MWT: 6-minute walking test, 6MST: 6-mminute stepper test; +, ++ and +++: positive result, ±: controversial result, ?: no data in the literature; W: watts, m: meters and s: seconds.