Abstract
Purpose: The current work looked to provide context or location-based information to objective measures of sedentary time in cardiac rehab (CR) patients.
Methods: Accelerometry and GPS data was collected simultaneously in 50 patients attending a CR program in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Patients wore the devices for 9 days at the beginning (i.e., within the 1st 3 weeks), end (i.e., within the last 2 weeks) of CR and 3-months after program completion. Minute-by-minute sedentary time calculated from the accelerometry data was linked to GPS data using ArcGIS software and used to identify where sedentary time occurred. Descriptive statistics (frequencies) were calculated to look at the different locations patients were found to be sedentary.
Results: We linked > 1268 hours of sedentary and GPS data at each time point. Forty two different location codes were created to best categorize where participants' were when they were sedentary. At the beginning, end and 3-months following CR patients were found to be most sedentary within their home (74%, 67% and 63% of the data linked at Time 1, Time 2, and Time 3, respectively). Other common places included vehicles (different means of transportation), professional centres and residential dwellings different from their home.
Conclusion: It appears that patients are most sedentary in their own homes. This work provides valuable information for informing future sedentary behaviour interventions in CR patients and highlights the home environment as an important intervention target in this patient population.
