Abstract
Breath-holding time test is of interest to clinical practitioners; however, its diagnostic accuracy has not been sufficiently covered in literature. The aim of this paper was to study the relationship between breath-holding time and the degree of lung tissue damage in post-COVID-19 patients. Materials and methods. Medical documents of patients (n = 358) aged 38–86 years after COVID-19 diagnosed with bilateral multisegmental pneumonia were analysed. The degree of lung tissue damage was assessed using computed tomography. The association between breath-holding time and the degree of lung tissue damage in patients was analysed using two linear multiple regression models, one of which included sociodemographic and anthropometric factors. Results. On average, breathholding time in patients was 17.1 ± 8.1 s. Model 1 established а moderate association between the degree of lung tissue damage and breath-holding time (R = 0.331; p < 0.001), the model predicted 11 % (R2 = 0.110; F = 43.934; p < 0.001) of test variance. The predictive power of Model 2 increased by 2.4 % when the following variables were included: sex, age, place of residence, height, and weight (R2 = 0.134; F = 9.061; p < 0.01). A negative correlation between breath-holding time and the degree of lung tissue damage (β = –2.866; p < 0.05) and a positive correlation between breath-holding time and patients’ sex (β = 2.323; p < 0.05) were identified. Other variables included in the regression model (age, height, weight, and place of residence) produced no significant effect (p > 0.05). Thus, in patients with bilateral multisegmental pneumonia caused by COVID-19, the increase in voluntary breath-holding time was associated with the degree of lung tissue damage (according to computed tomography data) regardless of the patients’ weight, height, age or place of residence. It should be noted that, on average, men performed the test better than women.
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