Year: 2025 | Month: January-March | Volume: 10 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 218-222
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52403/ijshr.20250129
Methods for Acute Care Respiratory Rehabilitation of Patients with Spinal Cord Injury: A Brief Review
Chamatkar Nagar
MPT (Orthopaedics); In charge, Adarsh Chander Medical Centre, Rohtak.
ABSTRACT
Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a traumatic event with an annual incidence of 3.6 - 195.4 patients per million in the world, carries a high risk of morbidity and mortality. Respiratory complications occur in 36-83% of patients with SCI and impaired respiratory muscle function leads to problems such as improper bronchial secretion clearance, pneumonia, atelectasis, and reduced pulmonary functions. A literature search was performed using the following databases: Cochrane Library, PubMed/MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, and Scopus and various studies were reviewed, which have examined various treatments that affect respiratory functions. Interventions examined include mechanical ventilation, respiratory muscle training (RMT), exercise training, abdominal FES, and treatment strategies for the respiratory management of acute tetraplegia. There is strong evidence to show that non-pharmacological interventions, such as respiratory muscle training (inspiratory and expiratory), have positive effects on lung function in people with acute SCI. Physiotherapy treatments during acute SCI would be useful for stable patients and further prospective large-scale RCTs should continue to be conducted to confirm these findings that physiotherapy is an effective adjuvant to improve acute pulmonary functioning and quality of life in these subjects.
Keywords: Respiratory muscle training, pulmonary functions, tetraplegia, maximum inspiratory pressure.