An improved technique for the simultaneous measurement of nasal and oral respiration

Abstract

A technique is described to record and measure both the nasal and oral components of respiratory airflow. The method is a modification of a previously reported technique,1 and represents an improvement in terms of accuracy, speed, convenience, and facility in both the acquisition and analysis of a large set of data per subject. The equipment and associated computer configuration permits a temporal characterization of inspiratory and expiratory parameters of both nasal and oral airflow, nasal airway resistance computation at predetermined flow rates, and the calculation of estimates of the minimum cross-sectional area of the nasal air passage.