Disclosures: Victorya R. Piehl: No financial relationships or conflicts of interest

Objective: To determine whether adults with major limb amputations meet guidelines of 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise per week, identify barriers to exercise, and determine whether pain or attitudes toward exercise correlate with total exercise time.

Design: Observational cross-sectional study Setting : Anonymous online questionnaire distributed via social media and in Seattle-area rehabilitation and prosthetics clinics. Participants : 124 adults aged 18 and over with major limb amputations

Interventions: Not applicable

Main Outcome Measures: Spearman’s correlation coefficients were calculated for self-reported weekly exercise minutes, barriers to exercise participation, residual and phantom limb pain, and pain attitudes.

Results: Of 124 participants, 30 (24.2%) met exercise guidelines and 87 (70.4%) reported at least one barrier to exercise. Barriers most frequently reported were chronic pain (29.84%) and instability (27.42%). There was a low negative correlation between exercise time and total number of barriers (r -0.33, p < .01). There was a weak negative correlation between exercise time and the belief that exercise causes harm (r -0.22, p .01 ). The number of barriers reported weakly correlated with beliefs that exercise causes harm (r 0.27, p < .01), medication is needed for pain (r 0.28, p < .01), others should be interested in their pain (r .29, p < .01) and emotions affect pain (r 0.37, p < .01). There were no statistically significant correlations between exercise time and limb or phantom pain. Conclusions: Adults with amputations experience unique barriers to exercise, including instability and chronic pain. People with more self-reported barriers also reported more negative attitudes about pain. These findings suggest that physicians should consider barriers to and attitudes towards exercise when treating patients with major limb amputations. Further studies are needed to confirm these findings and to explore potential interventions to improve exercise participation among adults with amputations.

Level of Evidence: Level III

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PM&R Meeting Abstracts - https://pmrjabstracts.org/abstract/barriers-to-exercise-after-amputation/