Rating of Perceived Exertion with Borg Scale in Stroke over Two Common Activities of the Daily Living

Background The Borg Scale for the rating of perceived exertion (RPE) is recommended to measure the intensity of physical exercise during stroke rehabilitation, but its reliability in activities of daily living is not explored. Objective To evaluate the correlation between the RPE using the Borg Scale (6-20) and the intensity of effort as measured by the Total Energy Expenditure per minute (TEE.min) in a post-stroke population for two tasks: walking at spontaneous comfortable speed and walking up and down stairs. Methods A cross-sectional study has been conducted. Any post-stroke subjects able to walk without being helped were recruited. Subjects were asked to walk at their spontaneous comfortable walking speed for 6 min and then to walk up and down stairs with a portable gas analyzer to measure the TEE.min. The RPE was evaluated by the Borg scale (6-20). The correlation between the RPE and the TEE.min for each subject's walking task and stairs task was calculated with the Pearson coefficient. Results Twenty subjects were included. TEE.min averaged at 5.6 (±1.2 kcal.min) for the walking task and 9.58 (±4.3 kcal.min) for the stairs task. The median RPE was 11 (min 6; max 15) for the walking task and 11 (min 6; max 16) for the stairs task. The correlation coefficient between the RPE and TEE.min was r = 0.12 (p = 0.25). Conclusion Our work has not determined a correlation between the RPE and TEE.min for two common activities of daily living in post-stroke subjects.