Relation between pulmonary functioning and anthropometric measurements in amateur athletes

Abstract

The main goal of this work was to investigate the relation between pulmonary functions and anthropometric measurements in late adolescence amateur athletes. Seventy six boys and 56 girls, totally 132 late adolescence amateur athletes were included in this study. The mean age was 19.32±1.64 years for boys and was 18.23±1.51 years for girls. Forced Vital Capacity (FVC), Peak Expiratory Flow (PEF), and Forced Expiratory Volume in the first second (FEV1) were measured by spirometer. Biacromial and biiliac anthropometric measurements were also taken by a trained physiotherapist. For both genders, statistical significances were defined between FVC/FEV1 and biacromial/biiliac breadth values (p<0.05). Although, statistical significance was showed between PEF and biacromial breadth for only girls (p<0.05), no significance was found between PEF and biiliac values for both boys and girls (p>0.05). According to the results of this study, while poor correlations were found, statistically significances indicated that biiliac and biacromial breadths might be valuable indicator for pulmonary functioning. However, further studies are needed.

Key words:

pulmonary function, anthropometric measurements, athletes.