[Does asthma promote changes in static posture? - Systematic review]

Considered a public health problem, asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease of the airways that induces an airflow obstruction, presenting clinical manifestations and heterogeneous therapeutic responses. That obstruction present in asthma patients leads to muscle shortening, which in compensation can promote postural changes, further impairing respiratory mechanics. Therefore, is necessary to synthesize the evidence available in the literature about changes in static posture in asthma patients in order to help guide clinical practice.

We performed a literature review in the databases MEDLINE, LILACS and Sci-ELO, covering the years 1980 to 2008, using the descriptors: "asthma" and "posture" and its correspondents in Portuguese; "asthma" and "spinal" and its correspondents in Portuguese, besides the manual search in the references of selected articles.

Four studies were identified of which two (2) found significant differences in static posture between asthmatic and non -asthmatics, while others, who evaluated only the spine, found no significant postural changes.

Some postural changes were identified in asthmatics: higher incidence of elevation and protraction of the scapular girdle, semi flexion of the arm, protraction of the head and rectification of the thoracic spine. However, the evidence is contradictory on the spine, which can be attributed to methodological and sample differences, and other variables not found in all study how the performance of physical activity, physiotherapy treatment, frequency of seizures and hospitalizations, rhinitis, mouth breathing.

The articles about this are still insufficient to reach a conclusion; carefully designed studies are needed to clarify these issues.