Correlation Study Of The Diaphragmatic Motion And Pulmonary Function In Cervical Spinal Cord Injury

Objective:To evaluate diaphragmatic motion via M-mode ultrasonography and to correlate it with pulmonary function in cervical spinal cord injury patients(CSCI) and healthy controls.Methods: This was a prospective observational study comprised of twenty cervical spinal cord injury patients of whom 18 were males and 2 females in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University and Kunming General Hospital of Chengdu Military Area Command from August 2016 to January 2017.This study also selected twenty healthy volunteers who were age,height and weight matched with the patients as the nomal control group. M-mode ultrasonography was used to observe the right diaphragmatic motion during quiet breathing and deep breathing in the CSCI group and the normal control group. The observation indexes of pulmonary function mainly including forced expiratory volume in one second(FEV1) , forced vital capacity(FVC), their ratio FEV1/FVC ,the maximal inspiratory pressure (MIP) and maximum oral airway pressure(MEP) etc.Results: There was no significant difference in age, sex, body mass index,smoking history between the two groups.There were significant differences in MIP,MEP.FVC, FVC/1, FEV1, FEV1/1 and PEF between the CSCI group and the normal control group(P<0.01).There were significant differences in diaphragmatic excursion during quiet breathing(P<0.05) and deep breathing(P<0.01) between the CSCI group and the normal control group.The diaphragmatic excursion had a good correlation with MIP, MEPFVC, FEV1 both in the CSCI group and the normal control group.Conclusion:Reductions in diaphragmatic motion and pulmonary function can occur in cervical spinal cord injury patients.Thus before the rehabilitation treatment,M-mode ultrasonography can be used for this purpose. It is a non-invasive method providing quantitative information that is correlated with pulmonary function.