Climbing four flights took 46 seconds on average for people with high treadmill fitness, against 82 seconds for low
What does a four-flight stair test time mean?
The finding
Mean times were 46 ± 11 s for people who reached 10 METs or more on the treadmill, 58 ± 21 s for 8–9.9 METs and 82 ± 41 s for under 8 METs.
- Authors
- Peteiro J, Bouzas-Mosquera A
- Published
- Revista Española de Cardiología (English ed.) 74(4):354–355 · 2021
- Evidence
- Read in the primary source; numbers checked.
- Source
- doi.org/10.1016/j.rec.2020.09.017
How it was studied
Scientific letter: 165 patients referred for exercise testing (mean age 66 ± 12, 55% men) climbed 60 stairs (four flights) "at a fast pace without stopping but also without running".
The numbers
Stair time correlated with METs at r = 0.53. A 60-second cut-off had 94% sensitivity and a 93% negative predictive value for reaching 10 METs; a 90-second cut-off had 96% specificity for being under 8 METs.
What it does not show
A small, symptomatic clinical sample, a moderate correlation, and no mortality outcome in this paper.
What Longstanding does with it
The app’s stair test uses the same 60 steps. No population norms exist for it, so its percentile is labelled estimated; the bands sit near these patient means but are not derived from them. Peteiro’s participants walked fast without running, so if you run, your time is not comparable with theirs.