Ventilatory Responses to Exercise by Age, Sex, and Health Status

This review provides an overview of the normal ventilatory responses to exercise in healthy adults, followed by discussions of the effects of aging, obesity, obstructive lung disease and heart failure on these responses. An understanding of the normal pulmonary responses to incremental exercise is requisite for appropriate interpretation of findings from clinical exercise testing. The purpose of this review is to provide concrete information to aid the interpretation of the exercise ventilatory response in both healthy and diseased populations. We begin with an overview of the normal exercise ventilatory response to incremental exercise in the healthy, normally trained young-to-middle aged adult male. The exercise ventilatory responses in two nonpatient populations (females, elderly) are then juxtaposed with the responses in healthy males. The review concludes with overviews of the exercise ventilatory responses in four patient populations (obesity, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, congestive heart failure). Again, we use the normal response in healthy adults as the framework for interpreting the responses in the clinical groups. For each healthy and clinical population, recent, impactful research findings will be presented.