Abstract
Respiratory muscle strength is an essential part of respiratory system evaluation as the process of ventilation eventually depends on the muscles of respiration. Aging reduces the muscle mass commonly referred to as ‘sarcopenia’. Thus, the middle-aged population goes under a sequential change of thoracic cages that affects the respiratory system. There are various tools available for assessment of the strength of these respiratory muscles. However, the feasibility of applying these tools is limited by their availability in various clinical settings, which poses a significant drawback when assessing their effectiveness. The reference equations on the other hand which address this issue are available to assess the respiratory muscle strength (RMS) using the maximal mouth pressures as maximum inspiratory pressure (MIP) and maximum expiratory pressure (MEP). The MIP and MEP are calculated on the basis of individual’s age, height and weight. The present study thus applied the available equation to assess the RMS which included 200 volunteers (100 males and 100 female) with mean age was of 56.67± 6.89 and 58.45± 6.85 for males and females with the average height was of 167.18 ± 3.99 and 159.3 ± 2.74 with the weight of 69.14 ± 3.37 and 60.30 ± 4.08 respectively. The BMI of the study cohort was 24.26±0.70 kg/m2. The mean MIP for males is 93.63 ± 4.84 and mean MEP is 84.84 ± 4.78 while in females the mean MIP was 69.84 ± 2.85 and mean MEP was 63.46 ± 2.86. The equations can further be utilized for identifying individual’s cut off respiratory pressure for evaluating respiratory muscle weakness. It can significantly be of much importance while diagnosing neurologically affected patients for their RMS as it gives an individual’s limit for inspiratory as well as expiratory muscle strength.
Keywords: Equation, Maximal Inspiratory Pressure, Maximal Expiratory Pressure, Middle-Aged Males and Females, Respiratory Muscle Strength.