Can Sit-to-walk Assessment Maximize Instrumented Timed Up & Go Test Output?

Daily human activities commonly include standing from a seated position. In research this transition is investigated, among others, as a part of a functional Timed Up & Go test. Spatio-temporal parameters are widely used to assess the sit-to-walk transition. Usually, the parameters calculated for the sit-to-walk signal is in its entirety. Another approach primarily splits the transition into phases and then calculates parameters for individual phases separately. The objective of this work is to examine whether splitting the Timed Up & Go test into subphases provides additional value for transition assessment. In order to compare both approaches, we utilized angular rate parameters (duration, peak value, mean, variance) and analyzed their reliability. The reliability proved to be dependent on the subject group and transition phase. In addition, we compared transition parameters from the entire transition and individual phases between the two subject groups. The mean only differentiated between the subject groups in individual phases, but not is entire transition. To summarize, splitting the transition into phases turned out to be beneficial for sit-to-walk transition assessment.