Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess sleep and breathing in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) with bulbar muscle involvement. Design: Prospective, controlled study of sleep and breathing measured during polysomnography. Setting: University teaching hospital and referral center. Patients: Patients with definite ALS and healthy age-matched control subjects. Intervent...

Breathing is maintained and controlled by a network of neurons in the brainstem that generate respiratory rhythm and provide regulatory input. Central chemoreception, the mechanism for CO(2) detection that provides an essential stimulatory input, is thought to involve neurons located near the medullary surface, whose nature is controversial. Good candidates are serotonergic medullary neurons an...

T reatments involving the manipulation of breathing are commonly used in routine practice by physiotherapists and other practitioners in a variety of clinical settings yet, despite decades of use, there is no robust evidence base to confirm the effectiveness of these activities. Practical and logistic difficulties exist in the design and execution of the randomised controlled clinical trials re...

STUDY OBJECTIVES The purpose of the present study was to compare in awake and asleep healthy subjects, under nasal intermittent positive pressure ventilation (nIPPV) with a two-level intermittent positive pressure device (two-level nIPPV), the efficacy of the controlled and spontaneous modes, and of different ventilator settings in increasing effective minute ventilation (VE). PARTICIPANTS Ei...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Breathing exercises are believed to modulate the cardiovascular oscillations in the body. To assess the validity of the assumption and understand the underlying mechanism, the key autonomic regulatory parameters such as heart rate variability (HRV), blood pressure variability (BPV) and baroreflex sensitivity (BRS) were recorded during controlled slow yogic breathing. Alt...

In Brief Objective: To evaluate the immediate effects of positive expiratory pressure therapy on oxygen saturation and ventilation after abdominal surgery. Background: Positive to treat postoperative hypoxia is widespread, despite a lack evidence effect. Methods: This randomized, sham-controlled, crossover trial investigated adults 1–2 days surgery at Umeå University Hospital, Sweden. The inter...

BACKGROUND The effect of breathing modification techniques on asthma symptoms and objective disease control is uncertain. METHODS A prospective, parallel group, single-blind, randomised controlled trial comparing breathing training with asthma education (to control for non-specific effects of clinician attention) was performed. Subjects with asthma with impaired health status managed in prima...

The purpose of this study was to determine how breathing protocols requiring varying degrees of control affect cardiovascular dynamics. We measured inspiratory volume, end-tidal CO2, R-R interval, and arterial pressure spectral power in 10 volunteers who followed the following 5 breathing protocols: 1) uncontrolled breathing for 5 min; 2) stepwise frequency breathing (at 0.3, 0.25, 0.2, 0.15, 0...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect of Buteyko breathing techniques (BBT) in the management of asthma. DESIGN Prospective, blinded, randomised study comparing the effect of BBT with control classes in 39 subjects with asthma. The study was conducted from January 1995 to April 1995. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING Subjects recruited from the community, aged 12 to 70 years, with asthma and substantial ...