Respiratory effort sensation during exercise with induced expiratory-flow limitation in healthy humans

Abstract

Kayser, Bengt, Pawel Sliwinski, Sheng Yan, Mirek Tobiasz, and Peter T. Macklem. Respiratory effort sensation during exercise with induced expiratory-flow limitation in healthy humans. J. Appl. Physiol. 83(3): 936–947, 1997.—Nine healthy subjects (age 31 ± 4 yr) exercised with and without expiratory-flow limitation (maximal flow ∼1 l/s). We monitored flow, end-tidal [Formula: see text], esophageal (Pes) and gastric pressures, changes in end-expiratory lung volume, and perception (sensation) of difficulty in breathing. Subjects cycled at increasing intensity (+25 W/30 s) until symptom limitation. During the flow-limited run, exercise performance was limited in all subjects by maximum sensation. Sensation was equally determined by inspiratory and expiratory pressure changes. In both runs, 90% of the variance in sensation could be explained by the Pes swings (difference between peak inspiratory and peak expiratory Pes). End-tidal[Formula: see text] did not explain any variance in sensation in the control run and added only 3% to the explained variance in the flow-limited run. We conclude that in healthy subjects, during normal as well as expiratory flow-limited exercise, the pleural pressure generation of the expiratory muscles is equally related to the perception of difficulty in breathing as that of the inspiratory muscles.