Use of Ratings of Perceived Exertion in Rehabilitation Services: Past and Present Researches

Cite this article: Coquart J. Use of Ratings of Perceived Exertion in Rehabilitation Services:Past and Present Researches. J J Physiother Exercise. 2015, 1(1): 003. The concept of effort perception, introduced in the late 50’s from scales measuring local fatigue or breathlessness [1] is an area of extensive research and has been applied in numerous sporting, pedagogical, ergonomic and clinical applications [2]. Generally, effort perception can be defined as the intensity of subjective effort, stress, discomfort and fatigue that is felt during physical exercise [3]. It involves the collective integration of afferent feedback from physiological stimuli (e.g., heart rate: HR, oxygen uptake: V O2, ventilation, muscular acidosis, blood glucose, body temperature) and feed-forward mechanisms to enable an individual to evaluate how hard or easy an exercise task feels at any point in time [4]. However, although physiological stimuli dominate the perceptual process, the latter is moderated by situational (e.g., knowledge of the exercise end point) [5-8](and dispositional (e.g., cognitive style) psychological factors [9-12]. Consequently, effort perception is considered as a complex psychophysiological variable. To quantify effort perception, a number of scales have been developed and validated [13-18]. However, Borg’s Ratings of Perceived Exertion (RPE) Scale (1970) [4] has always been and remains the most commonly used scale in adults [8, 1923]. The RPE scale is frequently administered in hospital and healthcare centers during graded exercise tests (GXT) and rehabilitation programs in order to optimize patients’ care management [24]. The RPE scale is an easy tool to use. It is valid, reliable and sensitive during various exercise modalities and in various clinical populations. Indeed, the information delivered by the RPE scale can facilitate design and management of each step of a patient’s rehabilitation program.