Spirometry Examination of Adolescents with Thoracic Idiopathic Scoliosis: Is Correction for Height Loss Useful?

Katarzyna Politarczyk; Mateusz Kozinoga; Łukasz Stępniak; Paweł Panieński; Tomasz Kotwicki

doi:10.3390/jcm10214877

Spirometry Examination of Adolescents with Thoracic Idiopathic Scoliosis: Is Correction for Height Loss Useful?

J Clin Med. 2021 Oct 22;10(21):4877. doi: 10.3390/jcm10214877.

Authors

Katarzyna Politarczyk¹, Mateusz Kozinoga¹, Łukasz Stępniak¹, Paweł Panieński², Tomasz Kotwicki¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Spine Disorders and Pediatric Orthopaedics, University of Medical Sciences, 61-545 Poznan, Poland.
² Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Medical Sciences, 60-355 Poznan, Poland.

Abstract

Loss of body height is observed in patients with idiopathic scoliosis (IS) due to spine curvatures. The study compared pulmonary parameters obtained from spirometry examination considering the measured versus the corrected body height. One hundred and twenty adolescents with Lenke type 1 or 3 IS who underwent preoperative spirometry examination and radiographic evaluation were enrolled. The mean thoracic Cobb angle was 68° ± 12.6, range 48-102°. The difference between the measured and the corrected body height increased with the greater Cobb angle. Using the corrected body height instead of the measured body height significantly changed the predicted values of pulmonary parameters and influenced the interpretation of the pulmonary testing results.

Keywords: Cobb angle; body height; idiopathic scoliosis; pulmonary function test.