Results
From a total of 60 volunteers responding to the announcements, one was
excluded due to respiratory complications. Fifty-nine asymptomatic
subjects (52.5% males) were included. After assessing both sides on
each subject in both maximum inspiration and expiration, we analyzed a
total of 236 measurements. Table 1 provides sociodemographic
and anthropometric data of the total sample, and divided by gender,
respiratory moment, and side. In general, men exhibited higher age,
height, weight, BMI, thorax perimeter, rhomboid depth, pleura depth, and
rhomboid-to-pleura distance (all, p<0.001). No side-to-side
differences were found in any feature. Differences were found between
inspiration and expiration for thorax perimeter (p<0.001),
rhomboid to pleura distance (p<0.001) and pleura depth
(p<0.001), but rhomboid depth showed no differences
(p>0.05).
Table 2 summarizes Pearson’s correlation coefficients of
rhomboid and pleura depth with anthropometric features. Pleura depth was
correlated with respiratory moment, age, perimeter, weight, height, BMI,
and gender. Rhomboid depth was correlated with perimeter, weight,
height, BMI, and gender, not age. In addition, significant correlations
also existed among the anthropometric variables with no
multicollinearity (except height with BMI and perimeter); therefore,
height was excluded from the regression analysis.
Table 3 describes the hierarchical regression analysis
conducted in this study for determining pleura depth. BMI contributed
with 55.9% of the variance (p<0.001), gender contributed an
additional 13.3% (p<0.001), and thorax circumference the last
0.5% of variance (p<0.05). When combined, anthropometric
features explained a total of 69.7% of variance of pleura depth.
Table 4 shows the hierarchical regression analysis conducted
for rhomboid major depth. BMI contributed the 42.2% of the variance
(p<0.001), gender contributed an additional 8.7%
(p<0.001), and thorax circumference the last 0.6% of variance
(p<0.05). Therefore, the combined model explained 51.5% of
variance for predicting the rhomboid depth.