SWEmean of Quadriceps, a Potential Index of Complication Evaluation to Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Abstract

To develop a potential quadriceps' index of complication evaluation for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) which is simple, convenient, and quantifiable. Patients and Methods: We conducted a prospective study of 59 patients with COPD and 56 healthy controls recruited by the Chengdu First People's Hospital. Grayscale ultrasound (US) of the rectus femoris was performed to measure thickness (RF thick ) and cross-sectional area (RF csa ). Shear wave elastography was used to determine the mean elasticity index (SWE mean ) of the rectus femoris (SWE RFmean ), vastus lateralis (SWE VLmean ) and vastus medialis (SWE VMmean ). Clinical features included dyspnea index score (modified British Medical Research Council (MMRC) score), the Five-Repetition Sit-to-Stand Test (5STS) and the Six-Minute Walk Test (6MWT). We compared the differences between US parameters and SWEmean in healthy controls and COPD patients. We also described the correlation between US parameters, SWE mean and clinical features of patients with COPD. Results: The intra-observer repeatability for the performance of using SWE to measure quadriceps stiffness was excellent (intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC)>0.75, p < 0.001). There was a statistically significant difference in the SWE mean of the quadriceps (p < 0.001), but no significant difference in terms of RF thic and RF csa (p > 0.05) between healthy controls and COPD patients. The SWE RFmean was positively correlated with the 6MWT (r = 0.959, p < 0.001), and negatively related to the mMRC (r=−0.825, p < 0.001), CAT (r=−0.993, p < 0.001) and 5STS (r=−0.936, p < 0.001). However, the RF thic , RF csa , SWE VLmean and SWE VMmean were not correlated with clinical features (p > 0.05). Conclusion: As a supplement to US, SWE reflects changes of stiffness in the quadriceps of COPD patients, and can expanding the dimension of US for assessing the quadriceps. Furthermore, SWE mean was associated with clinical features, and represents a potential index with which to reflect the clinical features of COPD patients.

Comparison of the asymmetries in muscle mass, biomechanical property and muscle activation asymmetry of quadriceps femoris between patients with unilateral and bilateral knee osteoarthritis

“…The pain mainly concentrated in the knee joint and around the tibial plateau, and the quadriceps femoris had relatively less pain in the early stage of KOA. Some studies have assessed the risk of muscle weakness and sarcopenia in COPD patients by measuring the RF SWE ( Deng et al, 2021 ; Niu et al, 2022 ). The results showed that the shear modulus of patients was significantly lower than that of normal people, and the sensitivity of this index was higher than that of muscle thickness and cross-sectional area.…”

“…Shear wave elastography (SWE) is a novel ultrasonography techniqie. It transmits and tracks shear waves to obtain Shear modulus values, and dynamically depicts the distribution of SWE in target tissues in real time ( Niu et al, 2022 ). Shear modulus value can be used to quantify local muscle stiffness ( Chalchat et al, 2022 ), and tiffness is a proxy for the force of muscle contraction ( Lin et al, 2022 ).…”

Objective Methods of Muscle Tone Diagnosis and Their Application—A Critical Review

“…There are already many approaches for the use of ultrasound in the assessment of tissue rheological properties [ 67 ], the most widely used being the supersonic shear wave imaging (SSI) [ 68 ]. The method has so far been attributed with a variable reliability ranging between 0.67 and 0.92 (95% CI Avg , see Table 1 ) by various studies [ 33 , 40 , 41 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 , 80 , 81 ].…”