Chest
Clinical InvestigationsPulmonary FunctionThoracic Dimensions at Maximum Lung Inflation in Normal Subjects and in Patients With Obstructive and Restrictive Lung Diseases
Section snippets
Subject Selection
Subjects included in this study were all white and had beenreferred over a period of 5 years to the pulmonary physiologylaboratory for complete pulmonary function testing (PFT) and for whomstandard chest radiographs were available. For the initial screening, 2,638 PFT reports were consulted and four groups of subjects wereidentified using the following criterion. Patients who met American Thoracic Society standards for normal lung function12(ie, with values for FVC, FEV1,single-breath diffusing
Subject Characteristics
The anthropologic characteristics and lung function data of thedifferent groups are summarized in Table 1. The age, height, and bodymass index (BMI) of normal subjects varied widely and uniformly andcovered the range seen in the study patients. In normal subjects, BMIwas significantly and positively correlated with age. For each gender, height was comparable among groups. The CF group, however, wassignificantly younger, and the COPD group and the RLD group weresignificantly older than normal
Discussion
These results show that all anthropologic variablesconsidered contribute significantly, albeit to a different extent, tothe observed variance in thoracic dimensions among adults and thatthese relationships are comparable among normal subjects and patientswith obstructive lung disease and RLD. Radial rib cage dimensions weremore tightly coupled to anthropologic variables than HDI, but the axialdimension contributed more to variations in the volume of the chestwall and lungs. Variations in the
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This study was supported by the Medical Research Council of Canada.