Chest
Clinical InvestigationsEffects of Obesity on Respiratory Resistance
Section snippets
Patients
Quetelet's index (or body mass index [BMI]), wt/ht2, in which wt is weight (kg) and ht is height (m), was the inclusion criterion for the subjects participating in this study. Obesity was defined by a BMI larger than 25.4
Forty-six patients were selected. They comprised 31 women and 15 men, aged from 16 to 63 years (38.7 ±14.4 years; mean ± SD), with a height of 165 ± 6 cm (range, 154 to 186 cm). All these subjects were healthy, with no cardiac or major metabolic disorders. They did not complain
RESULTS
The general characteristics of the patients are given in Table 1. Patients in all three groups were comparable for age and height (ANOVA, ns), and constituted a representative group of middle-aged obese subjects.
DISCUSSION
Although lung volumes are known to decrease in obesity,11 the resistive properties of the respiratory system have seldom been investigated in subjects with this disorder.12, 13 In the present study, we demonstrated that Rrs increases in obese subjects and showed that this increase was mainly due to the decrease in lung volumes.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study was supported by a grant from Caisse Nationale d'Assurance Maladie.
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Manuscript received June 15; revision accepted September 23.