We designed a study to measure the functional capacity requirements of firefighters
to aid in the development of an occupation-specific training program in cardiac rehabilitation;
23 healthy male firefighters with no history of heart disease completed a fire and
rescue obstacle course that simulated 7 common firefighting tasks. They wore complete
personal protective equipment and portable metabolic instruments that included a data
collection mask. We monitored each subject's oxygen consumption (VO2) and working heart rate, then calculated age-predicted maximum heart rates (220 −
age) and training target heart rates (85% of age-predicted maximum heart rate). During
performance of the obstacle course, the subjects' mean working heart rates and peak
heart rates were higher than the calculated training target heart rates (t22 = 5.69 [working vs target, p <0.001] and t22 = 15.14 [peak vs target, p <0.001]). These findings, with mean results for peak VO2 (3,447 ml/min) and metabolic equivalents (11.9 METs), show that our subjects' functional
capacity greatly exceeded that typically attained by patients in traditional cardiac
rehabilitation programs (5 to 8 METs). In conclusion, our results indicate the need
for intense, occupation-specific cardiac rehabilitation training that will help firefighters
safely return to work after a cardiac event.
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: January 27, 2009
Accepted:
November 18,
2008
Received in revised form:
November 18,
2008
Received:
September 26,
2008
Footnotes
This project was supported by a grant from the Cardiovascular Research Review Committee in cooperation with the Baylor Heart and Vascular Institute, Dallas, Texas, United States. The authors thank the committee for their encouragement and support of cardiovascular rehabilitation research projects.
Identification
Copyright
© 2009 Elsevier Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
