The Influence of Breathing Exercises on Regional Ventilation in Healthy and Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Figures & data

Table 1. Subjects’ demographics.

	Age (years)	Height (cm)	Weight (kg)
Healthy volunteers	25.8 ± 0.7	176.9 ± 5.8	74.8 ± 11.7
Patients with COPD	68.7 ± 9.7	170.1 ± 7.2	68.0 ± 10.7

Figure 1. Boxplots of tidal variation (TV) at different breathing exercises. Left column is data from healthy volunteers and right column is from the patients with COPD. QTB, quiet tidal breathing; DB, diaphragmatic breathing; PL, pursed lip breathing; PL + DB, pursed lip combining diaphragmatic breathing. The boxes mark the quartiles while the whiskers extend from the box out to the most extreme data value within 1.5*the interquartile range of the sample. Red pluses are samples outside the ranges. *p < 0.013; ***p < 0.0001 compared to QTB.

Figure 2. Boxplots of end-expiratory lung impedance (EELI) at different breathing exercises. Left column is data from healthy volunteers and right column is from the patients with COPD. QTB, quiet tidal breathing; DB, diaphragmatic breathing; PL, pursed lip breathing; PL + DB, pursed lip combining diaphragmatic breathing. The boxes mark the quartiles while the whiskers extend from the box out to the most extreme data value within 1.5*the interquartile range of the sample. Red pluses are samples outside the ranges. *p < 0.01; ***p < 0.0001 compared to QTB.

Figure 3. Boxplots of Center of ventilation (CoV) at different breathing exercises. Left column is data from healthy volunteers and right column is from the patients with COPD. QTB, quiet tidal breathing; DB, diaphragmatic breathing; PL, pursed lip breathing; PL + DB, pursed lip combining diaphragmatic breathing. The boxes mark the quartiles while the whiskers extend from the box out to the most extreme data value within 1.5*the interquartile range of the sample. Red pluses are samples outside the ranges. ***p < 0.0001 compared to QTB.

Figure 4. Boxplots of the global inhomogeneity (GI) index at different breathing exercises. Left column is data from healthy volunteers and right column is from the patients with COPD. QTB, quiet tidal breathing; DB, diaphragmatic breathing; PL, pursed lip breathing; PL + DB, pursed lip combining diaphragmatic breathing. The boxes mark the quartiles while the whiskers extend from the box out to the most extreme data value within 1.5*the interquartile range of the sample. Red pluses are samples outside the ranges. ***p < 0.0001 compared to QTB.

Figure 5. Boxplots of standard deviation of regional ventilation delay (RVD_SD) at different breathing exercises. Left column is data from healthy volunteers and right column is from the patients with COPD. QTB, quiet tidal breathing; DB, diaphragmatic breathing; PL, pursed lip breathing; PL + DB, pursed lip combining diaphragmatic breathing. The boxes mark the quartiles while the whiskers extend from the box out to the most extreme data value within 1.5*the interquartile range of the sample. Red pluses are samples outside the ranges. ***p < 0.0001 compared to QTB.