A Simplified Master's Two‐step Test for Preschool Children

To investigate the usefulness of a simplified Master's two step test (s‐MTT) for preschool children aged 4–6, s‐MTT was carried out in our pediatric cardiology clinic using a new stair and connector for joining the leads from each child to the ECG machine. The subjects were 21 children with Kawasaki disease without coronary involvement and four children with arrhythmias. The treadmill exercise test (TET) was done on the same day to compare the exercise load of s‐MTT with that of TET. Oxygen uptake during s‐MTT was also examined using another group consisting of eight outpatients. There were no differences in indices such as peak heart rate (HR), HR immediately after exercise, and performance ratio between the outpatients in this study and kindergarteners in the preliminary report, The proportions of peak HR and HR immediately after exercise in s‐MTT to those in TET were 91.1 ± 7.9 (mean ± SD)% and 91.1 ± 8.6%, respectively. The average oxygen uptake of the eight outpatients in s‐M'IT was 23.2 ± 4.1 ml/min/kg. These studies suggest that the simplified MTT is useful as a screening test, because it can be done for all children aged 4–6 in any laboratory.