Journal of applied physiology
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Clinical Trial
Effect of lung volume on forced expiratory flows during rapid thoracoabdominal compression in infants.
The rapid thoracoabdominal compression (RTC) technique is commonly used in pulmonary function laboratories to assess flow-volume relationships in infants unable to produce a voluntary forced expiration maneuver. This technique produces forced expiratory flows over only a small lung volume segment (i.e., tidal volume). It has been argued that the RTC technique should be modified to measure flow-volume relationships over a larger portion of the vital capacity range to imitate the voluntary maximal forced expiratory maneuver obtained in older children and adults. ⋯ We compared maximal expiratory flows at isovolume points (25 and 10% of forced vital capacity) and found no significant differences in maximal isovolume flow rates measured from the different lung volumes. We conclude that there is no obvious need to initiate RTC from higher lung volumes if the technique is used for flow comparisons. However, compared with measurements of maximal flows at functional residual capacity by RTC from end-tidal inspiration, the initiation of RTC from a defined and reproducible inspiratory level appears to decrease the intrasubject variability of the maximal expiratory flows at low lung volumes.