A small clinical study of AffloVest, a portable High Frequency Chest Wall Oscillation (
The AffloVest, manufactured by International Biophysics Corp, “contributed to improved lung function scores,” said Michael Cooper, RT, of Chicago, IL, who conducted the study.
Cooper looked at FEV1 for the largest sign of improvement, with a goal to improve that number ? 10%. “With the AffloVest, I saw an overall 11.5% increase, with one patient achieving an 18.8% increase,” said Cooper, who noted positive changes on the FVC, FVC to FEV1 ratio as well as favorable results in the FEF 25/75.
Actually, this “study” does NOT show that Afflovest “improves” pulmonary function, although that is what they try to claim.
For starters, there are no p-values, control group, or anything else needed to support the claim that Afflovest improves lung function. This article only has 5 subjects (this must be a revised version of this article that previously published results on only 12 of its 25 total subjects–still a very small sample, but that’s no excuse for only reporting the “good” data). In addition, these are adolescents, and they are measuring the volumes as total amount, not compared to their predicted values which change with age. Of course a teenager’s FVC will increase in the months between tests–an increase is NOT the same thing as an improvement. When you grow older and/or taller (as the adolescents in this study are very likely to have done, especially since the tests were done up to 5 months apart for some patients), lung volumes increase. If they had a control group, this would have shown that.
The results it includes in the form of spirometry are incomplete—there is no FEV1/FVC listed at all, which is a better indicator of lung function than either FVC or FEV1 total values alone, and it is highly suspicious that they left it out (of course I did the math myself, and in 2 of the 5 patients the FEV1/FVC actually decreased, which although may seem detrimental to a layperson, it appears to be not statistically significant).
Also, the lack of a control group does not show what effect the lung “improvement” was from the other therapies the patients are one–tobramycin nebs alone are associated with improved pulmonary function, which many CF patients are on.
I am so sick of seeing this “article” everywhere–it’s nothing but a marketing tool masquerading as junk science. This writing is an insult to anyone with even a basic understanding of research.