Dyspnoea in elderly people without medical history

Main Category: Respiratory / Asthma
Article Date: 09 Oct 2005 - 5:00 PST

email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions  

Many people over 65 years complain of breathlessness or dyspnoea. Sometimes the cause of this symptom appears obvious, either cardiac or respiratory in origin. In other cases the cause is less clear.

To get some insight into this matter, Claire de Bisschop (Laboratoire des Adaptations Physiologiques aux Activités Physiques, Poitiers, France) and her colleagues studied a population of 1,318 volunteers, aged 66 to 88 years, chosen at random from the whole population of the city of Bordeaux and its suburbs.

The volunteers were asked to fill in two questionnaires, one which was sociodemographic and one medical, and to perform respiratory function measurements. Respiratory volumes and maximal flow were measured, as well as expiratory flow limitation (EFL). EFL is determined as follows: when a subject breaths through the mouth, application of a negative pressure at the mouth draws out the air within the lungs, and the expired flow increases. The lack of increase in this flow is called EFL.

A total of 750 volunteers completed the measurements and filled in the questionnaires, and 47% of this population had EFL. EFL was more common in females than in males, and it was more common in the shortest people.

The level of dyspnoea was correlated to the presence and level of EFL. Most subjects with EFL had a medical history of lung or heart diseases. However, 15% of this population had dyspnoea and EFL without medical history, suggesting that aging itself was the cause of the symptom.

These patients were called ELDA for Expiratory Limitation Due to Age. Most of them were females, sometimes overweight. ELDA people had a smaller vital capacity and maximal flow than healthy individuals of the same age.

It can be assumed that an increase in vital capacity would probably reduce dyspnoea and EFL. However, as yet, no medical strategy seems to have been developed to improve the respiratory function of these patients.

The European Respiratory Journal is the peer-reviewed scientific publication of the European Respiratory Society (more than 7,000 specialists in lung diseases and respiratory medicine in Europe, the United States and Australia).
European Respiratory Journal

• Additional
• References
• Citations