If you have Asthma the inside walls of your airways can become inflamed. The inflammation makes the airways very sensitive, and they tend to react strongly to things that you are allergic to or find irritating.

During an asthma attack, muscles around the airways tighten up, making the airways narrower so less air flows through. Inflammation increases, and the airways become more swollen and even narrower Cells in the airways may also make more mucus than usual. This extra mucus also narrows the airways. These changes make it harder to breathe. When the airways react, they get narrower, and less air flows through to your lung tissue. Persistent symptoms include:
  • Persistent Coughing
  • Chest Tightness
  • Wheezing
  • Trouble Breathing

How Does BCV Impact These Patients?

BCV works by recruitment of alveoli and improvement in ventilation/perfusion matching. Negative extrathoracic pressure of any sort provides a distending pressure on both airways and alveoli by increasing the transpulmonary pressure gradient. It may differ from positive airway pressure by avoiding compression of the pulmonary vascular bed. In an infant, it may also stabilize the easily collapsible chest wall, overcoming small airway closure and reducing air trapping. BCV will improve airway conductance or lung compliance. This is associated with a decrease WOB (work of breathing ) and makes the patient more comfortable.
BCV has been proven to increase muscle strength and endurance, decrease hypercapnia, improve functional reserve of the respiratory muscles and decrease inspiratory muscle fatigue.

Increased Lung Recruitment

  • BCV works in conjunction with your bodies physiology to naturally fill more of the lung with air

Better Patient Experience

  • By allowing patients to continue to eat and drink, as well as speak to their loved ones, BCV fosters patient independence, and active involvement with their treatment.

Increased Cardiac Output

  • A brief period of cuirass NPV increases cardiac output of patients.
People with CF need daily chest physiotherapy, which involves vigorous massage to help loosen the sticky mucus. Parents of a child with CF are taught by hospital staff how to do this. Older children and adults with CF can be taught to do this for themselves.
Chest physiotherapy is important because it helps to prevent the thick, sticky lung secretions from blocking the air tubes This helps to reduce infection and prevent lung damage. The length of treatment sessions varies according to need. If there are few or no secretions, treatment sessions may only need to last 10-15 minutes. However, it could take as long as 45-60 minutes if there are many secretions to be cleared. The number of treatment sessions should be varied Most people do two a day when all is well, increasing to four a day when necessary. If no secretions are present, some people with CF only need treatment once a day.

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