Pulmonary capacities of different groups of sportsmen in India

Pulmonary functional capacities, vital capacity (VC) maximum voluntary ventilation (MVV), forced expiratory volume in 1 second and FEV 1.0 (per cent VC) of 168 sportsmen belonging to different sports activities and of 10 sedentary individuals have been studied. It was observed that all these pulmonary functional capacities of different groups of sportsmen were higher than those of the sedentary group. The mean VC of the basketball, boxing, cricket, football, hockey and the table tennis groups, the mean MVV of all the groups except the athletic, badminton and football groups, and the mean FEV 1.0 of football, hockey, swimming and volleyball groups were significantly higher than those of the sedentary group. The mean values of all the three pulmonary functional capacities of only the hockey group were found to be significantly higher than those of the sedentary individuals. The available reported pulmonary capacity values, except FEV 1.0 of a few groups of sportsmen studied abroad, were higher than those of their counterparts studied here. These might be due to the ethnic variation as well as the variation in age, body size and level of physical fitness which influence the different pulmonary capacities.