Chest
Clinical InvestigationsAbsence of Benefit of Incentive Spirometry in Low-Risk Patients Undergoing Elective Cholecystectomy: A Controlled Randomized Study
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
Forty patients in the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ class 1 and 2 who were undergoing elective cholecystectomy through right subcostal incision agreed after informed consent to participate in the study, which was approved by the committee of ethics of our institution. Patients with a ratio of weight to height greater than 0.45 were excluded from the study, as were patients over 65 years of age and those with an acute infection.
The patients were randomly assigned to one of the following
Results
The physical and clinical characteristics of the patients in the two groups were similar, as indicated in Table 1. The majority of the patients in both groups were middle-aged women. Anesthesia lasted less than three hours in the majority of patients in both groups (18 of 20 in either group). All patients received a similar dose of minor analgesics, and the number of patients, (nine in the control group and ten in the group receiving incentive spirometry) requiring meperidine and the average
Discussion
Our study confirms the high incidence of postoperative pulmonary complications after upper-abdominal surgery, which in the literature was found to be in the range of 30 to 70 percent.7, 14, 15, 16 Our study also confirms the important decrease in PaO2 after upper-abdominal surgery associated with the greatest measured depression in FVC which occurred on the second postoperative day, as noted in other studies.6, 8, 17
Nevertheless, comparison between the two groups revealed no significant
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank the staff of physiotherapists, Mrs. E. Agrebi for her secretarial work, and Mr. D. Robertson for his excellent technical assistance.
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Manuscript received July 24, revision accepted November 4.