Specific airway resistance in children: Panting or tidal breathing?

Abstract

Tidal breathing is associated with an overestimation of sRaw compared with panting in children. Although the latter results in small increase throughout the panting maneuver, sRaw(p) is probably more trustful than sRaw(tb).

Flow dependence of specific airway resistance and diagnostic of asthma in children

“…The study included records from 40 asthmatic and 25 healthy children aged 6.5–11. All but 10 healthy controls have been included in a recently published study . The characteristics of the population are reported in Table .…”

“…This may express firstly the relative increase in random noise in the breathing signals. More importantly, some residual looping between ΔV plet and V' may be observed during panting, although significantly reduced compared with tidal breathing . There may be several explanations for this.…”

“…Forced spirometry and the procedure for measuring sRaw have been described previously . A Jaeger MedGraphics 1085 barometric body box reequipped with transducers, electronics and informatics was used.…”

“…Significant discrepancies between tidal breathing with electronic compensation versus panting in adult subjects further suggested inadequacies of the former procedure . Similar comparison in children aged 6 or more showed significant increase by the electronic compensation, and the method‐related difference in sRaw exceeded that observed between asthma and health …”

Poor standardisation of plethysmographic specific airways resistance measurement despite widespread use

“…This occurred despite striking lack of agreement with respect to methodology, outcomes and reference data. Variation in several of these important methodological aspects can significantly affect recorded sR aw values [8,11] and interpretation in the clinical setting [12]. Publication of recommendations in 2010 for testing protocol using the most common device in our survey has failed to prevent marked variation in practice [8].…”