• Jonathan Golledge, Khyber Maarij, Joseph V Moxon, Jonathan D Beard, Sebastien Girold, Hans Wrang, and Dylan R Morris.
• Queensland Research Centre for Peripheral Vascular Disease, College of Medicine and Dentistry, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia; The Department of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery, The Townsville Hospital, Townsville, Queensland, Australia. Electronic address: Jonathan.Golledge@jcu.edu.au.
• Eur J Vasc Endovasc Surg. 2018 Oct 1; 56 (4): 534-543.

ObjectivesAn exercise programme is part of the initial management of peripheral artery disease (PAD). Nordic walking uses poles and a core-focused walking technique to reduce the load on the legs, which may have advantages as an exercise programme for PAD. This systematic review examined the benefit of a Nordic walking programme for treating PAD compared with other programmes.MethodsA systematic approach was used to identify clinical trials comparing Nordic walking and control programmes in PAD patients. For inclusion, studies had to report maximum walking distance (MWD) measured with a treadmill test or corridor walking test both at entry and follow up. Study quality was appraised using the Cochrane collaboration tool for assessing risk of bias. An inverse variance weighted meta-analysis was performed to compare improvements in MWD.ResultsFive independent trials involving 294 patients were identified. In three trials, supervised Nordic walking programmes were compared with supervised standard walking. One trial compared a home based Nordic walking programme with a similar standard walking programme. One trial compared a partly supervised Nordic walking programme with best medical management. Meta-analysis of all data suggested that MWD improvements were similar for patients treated by Nordic and standard walking programmes (standardised mean difference, SMD = 1.31, 95% CI -1.28 to 3.91; p = .322). Findings for completely supervised programmes were similar to the primary analysis (SMD = -0.79, 95% CI -2.81 to 1.24; p = .446) while those from partially supervised or home based programmes favoured Nordic walking (SMD = 4.46, 95% CI 3.39, 5.53; p < .001), mainly due to results from one home based trial.ConclusionsThis systematic review suggests no benefit of Nordic over standard walking as supervised exercise for PAD. Favourable results were reported for one home based Nordic walking programme. A larger trial is needed to assess whether this finding can be replicated or not.Crown Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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