THERAPEUTIC BLOWING TOYS: DOES THE OVERLAP OF VENTILATORY STIMULI ALTER THE RESPIRATORY MECHANICS OF HEALTHY SCHOOLCHILDREN?

Objective: To verify whether the overlapping of ventilatory stimuli, resulting from playing with blowing toys, changes the respiratory mechanics of healthy schoolchildren.

Methods: Cross-sectional study with healthy schoolchildren aged seven to 14 years old from Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Southern Brazil. Spirometric data were obtained, a health questionnaire and the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) questionnaire were also applied. The procedure consisted of playing with the following blow toys in a random order: soap bubbles, party whistles and balloon. Before and after the intervention, the assessment of respiratory mechanics was carried out by impulse oscillometry - IOS (Erich Jaeger, Germany®). The ANOVA for repeated measures test was applied.

Results: 71 students of both genders with mean age of 9.7±2.1 years participated in the study. Results showed a progressive decrease of impedance (Z5), total airway resistance (R5) and resonance frequency (Fres) when the moment before the use of the first toy was compared with the moment after the third toy (Z5/p=0.048; R5/p=0.049; Fres/p=0.004). Fres also differed between the moment before the first and the second toy (p=0.048). After the use of each of the three blowing toys, the oscillometric parameters did not differ.

Conclusions: The difference in oscillometric parameters of R5 before the use of each toy indicates that the overlap of ventilatory stimuli produced by them provided a reduction in the R5.