Modern clinical medicine faces a growing need to expand the practical use of tailored approaches to diagnosis, treatment, and assessment of treatment efficacy for cardiovascular diseases. The 6-Minute Walk Test (6MWT) is one of the most common stress tests used to assess a patient’s functional capacity, indirectly determine the adaptive reserves of individuals with cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, optimize the diagnostic approach, and assess the individual prognosis of the disease and the treatment efficacy.

OBJECTIVE

To analyze the available scientific data on the use of the 6-Minute Walk Test in clinical practice, also in combination with other diagnostic techniques, and to substantiate the feasibility and prospects for automation of the standardized test using a polyfunctional device.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Modern scientific data for analysis was searched in the PubMed, eLIBRARY, Google Scholar, Research Gate, Semantic Scholar, and CyberLeninka databases for 2001—2024.

RESULTS

6MWT is a fairly universal, easy-to-implement, and informative tool for assessing the functional capabilities of both healthy subjects and patients with chronic non-infectious pathology.

CONCLUSION

Despite the long history of 6MWT use in practical medicine, some questions remain unanswered. This particularly concerns assessing the adaptive capacity of patients receiving beta-blockers, ways to minimize the time medical personnel spend conducting the test, and other related issues. It is feasible to develop a polyfunctional device to conduct 6MWT without the active participation of medical workers and with the possibility of automated generation of the initial conclusion.