Efficacy of Incentive Spirometry in Expiratory Muscle Training Following Abdominal Surgery

BACKGROUND: Incentive spirometry is a device which helps in the improvement of lung function after abdominal surgery. It motivates the patients by giving visual feedback about their lung volumes. It is one of the less expensive and user-friendlydevices. Incentive spirometry facilitates the patients to take slow deep breath and there by producing a sustained maximal inspiration (SMI) that mainly helps in the prevention of atelectasis. But it is a common practice for physiotherapists to teach the patients to do expiratory exercise by reversing the incentive spirometer. The simplest way to measure the maximal inspiratory and expiratory pressures is by respiratory pressure meter in cmH2o. OBJECTIVE: To find out the efficacy of incentive spirometer in improving the expiratory muscle strength following abdominal surgery. METHODOLOGY: Quasi-Experimental study. PROCEDURE: 30 subjects were conveniently selected based on inclusion and exclusion criteria and allotted to group A (n=15) and group B (n= 15). Both groups were trained for inspiratory muscle and group A was also trained for expiratory muscle using incentive spirometry. OUTCOME MEASURES: Maximal inspiratory pressure (MIP), Maximal expiratory pressure (MEP). RESULT: This study shows that the mean MIP value have improved from 2nd to 7th postoperative day, but it is not statistically significant (P>0.05). The mean MEP values shows statistically significant (P<0.05) improvement from second to 7th postoperative day in group A when compared to group B. CONCLUSION:This study concludes that there is significant improvement in the expiratory muscle strength along with inspiratory muscle strength by training with the Incentive spirometry in the upside down and upright positions respectively.