Antenor Rodrigues

Introduction Skeletal muscle wasting and dysfunction are consequences of admission to the intensive care unit (ICU) for critical illness (Latronico and Guarneri, 2008; Puthucheary et al., 2010; Fazzini et al., 2023). Acute skeletal muscle deterioration is driven by the critical illness itself i.e., systematic inflammation, as well as the deleterious effects of treatment approaches i.e., immobilization and pharmaceutical interventions (Files et al., 2015; Parry and Puthucheary, 2015).

Background  Single-point measurements of maximal inspiratory pressure (MIP) are frequently used to suggest muscle weakness in clinical practice. Although there is a large variability in “mean” predicted MIP depending on the chosen reference values, it remains unclear whether those discrepancies actually impact on the prevalence of weakness, i.e., MIP below the lower limit of normal.

Maximal inspiratory pressure: does the choice of reference values matter? Antenor Rodrigues, Marianne Silva, Danilo Berton, Denis Faubert, Julianna Tang, Angie Zapotichny, Lori Crozier-Wells, Cathy Muir, Lutz Forkert, Denis O'Donnell, J. Alberto Neder European Respiratory Journal Sep 2016, 48 (suppl 60) PA2251; DOI: 10.1183/13993003.congress-2016.PA2251