Gait Speed as an Objective Measure

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Original Editor - User:Justin Bryan Top Contributors - Justin Bryan, Shaimaa Eldib, Kim Jackson and Nupur Smit Shah

Objective

The speed at which a person walks can be influenced by a number of factors, both voluntary and involuntary, and marks a functional skill that underpins a majority of the tasks that are essential to a person’s ability to function on a daily basis.  Given this, walking speed, which is more commonly referred to as gait speed in the clinical setting, is a metric that is extremely valuable for practitioners when examining aspects of functional mobility in their patients.  Additionally, given its ability to be influenced by multiple body systems (i.e. central nervous system, musculoskeletal system), gait speed is often used a predictor of overall health and function, especially in older adults.

Gait speed has been considered by some to be a "Vital Sign" like blood pressure and heart rate, and it's predictive ability has been linked with a myriad of common outcomes including hospitalization, fall risk, cognitive decline, disability, and mortality.

The objective of this page is to provide an overview of the gait speed as an outcome measure and it implications for clinical practice. Please note that this page looks specifically at gait speed as a value/metric, and not any one specific method or established procedure for measuring gait speed.

Intended Population

Gait speed can be measured in pretty much any population, but it is most commonly used as a predictive measure in the older adult population.

Method of Use

Gait speed itself is simply a measure of how fast a person walks. As such, there are many variations of how it can be measured, and no one set methods that is used across the board.