Lung Vital Capacity of Choir Singers and Nonsingers: A Comparative Study

The popularity of choir singing among Indonesian university students as an extracurricular activity has increased in the last few years. Choir singers use physiology principles especially respiration roles in the voice production process. This research aims to determine the lung vital capacity difference between singers and nonsingers.

This is a cross-sectional study which uses primary data collected from spirograms of 20 university students. Half of the students were Airlangga University choir singers, and the other half were students who are not members of the choir. The spirometry tests were performed to obtain inspiratory capacity, vital capacity, and forced vital capacity of both groups.

The average lung vital capacity of choir singers was higher (3.12 L) than that of the nonsingers (2.73 L). The average inspiratory capacity of the singer group was 1.79 L, and the average inspiratory capacity of the nonsinger group was 1.71 L. The lung vital capacity difference between singers and nonsingers group was statistically significant (P = 0.02). There was no significant inspiratory capacity difference between singers and nonsingers group in this study (P = 0.611). The forced vital capacity measurement showed a significant difference (P = 0.01) between singers (75.28%) and nonsingers (68.14%).

It can be understood that the increasing vital capacity in choir singers is most likely from the expiration phase of the respiration. Further studies need to be conducted to confirm the causes of the increasing vital capacity in singers.