A child with a long standing history of cyanotic breath holding attacks presented with acute respiratory distress. Subsequent investigation established that her clinical condition was caused by tracheomalacia. We hypothesise that tracheomalacia might be an under recognised contributor to cyanotic breath holding attacks, the pathogenesis of which is poorly understood.

Recent research considers distress (in)tolerance as an essential component in the development of various forms of psychopathology. A behavioral task frequently used to assess distress tolerance is the breath holding task. Although breath holding time (BHT) has been associated with behavioral outcomes related to inhibitory control (e.g., smoking cessation), the relationship among breath holding ...

In patients with pancreatic cancer, intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) under breath holding facilitates concentration of the radiation dose in the tumor, while sparing the neighboring organs at risk and minimizing interplay effects between movement of the multileaf collimator and motion of the internal structures. Although the breath-holding technique provides high interportal reproducibil...

It is vital to ask about illicit drug smoking in the respiratory history as marijuana smoking augments the detrimental effects of tobacco. We describe the case of a 28 year old marijuana smoker who developed a pneumothorax during a breath-holding competition. Pneumothorax is a common clinical entity that every physician should be aware of how to manage and lifetime risk is considerably increase...

[Purpose] The purpose of the present study was to clarify the effect of dyspnea induced by breath-holding on maximum muscular strength of patients with COPD. [Subjects] This study recruited 14 COPD subjects via public posting. [Methods] Dyspnea was assessed by the modified Borg scale. The subject asked to stop breathing at end-expiration and to hold their breath with a nose clip for as long as ...

Steady state measurements of the diffusing capacity of the lung are made at operational lung volume, whereas measurements by the breath-holding method are customarily made at full inspiration. The effect of lung inflation on diffusing capacity must be taken into account before the steady state and breath-holding methods can be validly compared. At rest the single breath diffusing capacity of th...