An Evaluation of Active Anterior and Posterior Rhinomanometry in British Adults

Abstract

In this study, active Anterior Rhinomanometry (ARM) and Posterior Rhinomanometry (PRM) were performed sequentially by 56 normal British Caucasian adults using an on-line Mercury Electronics NR6D Rhinomanometer. Xylometazoline nasal spray was used as a nasal decongestant before the test. In addition, repeated measurements were made on a randomly selected 13 subjects to evaluate the error of the methods. The mean total nasal airway resistance by the anterior method was found to be 0.182 Pa/cm3/s at a reference pressure of 150 Pascals, and by the posterior method 0.166 Pa/cm3/s at a reference pressure of 75 Pascals. These mean values are similar to those reported by other authors for Caucasians. The errors of the methods were found to be smaller than previously reported (Coefficient of variation, ARM = 6.9%; PRM = 7.7%). The total nasal airway resistance was higher during expiration than inspiration, and higher in women than in men. The ARM values were on an average 9% higher than those of the PRM, and the association between the two values was found to be moderate (r = 0.48). The higher ARM mean values could be attributed to inappropriateness of the conventional Ohm's law used in their calculation. For a number of reasons, PRM is considered to be more suitable than ARM for measuring nasal resistance.

Protruding the tongue improves posterior rhinomanometry in obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome

“…In other studies, failure rates have ranged from 8% (in well-trained individuals) [15] to 50% (in children) [16]. In a recent study by CANBAY et al [2], nine of 56 (16%) subjects did not complete the PRM recordings satisfactorily and were therefore excluded from the study. Interestingly, the same group who reported a failure rate of 15% with conventional PRM suggested that a plethysmograph be used for recording flow in order to leave free access to the face and therefore to obtain better control of the position of the oral tube; with this technique, the failure rate was as low as 1.4% in 1,000 paediatric patients [17].…”

Amount of airflow required for olfactory perception in laryngectomees: a prospective interventional study

“…The Rhinomanometer 300 (Atmos, Lenzkirch, Germany) was used in the study. During rhinomanometric measuring, the patients performed polite yawning technique and the technique applied did not differ greatly from the standard technique 6,7 . The measurements were used to evaluate the effect of polite yawning technique on nasal airflow rate.…”

A Comparison of Nasal Resistance in White Caucasians and Blacks

“…In a first ever study, Stocks and Godfrey (1978) demonstrated a greater nasal resistance in caucasian than in black infants during the first year of life. 8 Babatola (1990)9 studied resistance in Nigerian blacks, but did not find it to be significantly different from the caucasian values provided in the literature. A similar negative result was obtained by Calhoun et al (1990) in their measurement of whites, blacks, and hispanics.…”

“…A detailed description of the method and the evaluation of its errors have been presented previously. 8 Means and standard deviations of the nasal resistance values were calculated for the caucasians and blacks separately for both anterior and posterior methods. The means of the two groups were compared with an uncorrelated t-test.…”