| Objective: To systematically review the effects of exercise therapy on pulmonary function indexes such as vital capacity (VC), forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume in the first second (FEV1), the ratio of forced expiratory volume in the first second to forced vital capacity (FEV1/FVC), peak expiratory flow (PEF), and maximum voluntary ventilation (MVV) in patients with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS). Methods: Medline, Embase, CINAHL, Cochrane Library, PEDro, Wanfang Data, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) were conducted to collect randomized controlled trials of exercise therapy for the pulmonary function of AIS patients. The search time was from the establishment of the databases to October, 2024. Two researchers screened, extracted data, and used the Physiotherapy Evidence Database (PEDro) scale and the Cochrane Collaboration’s quality assessment tool to assess the quality of the included studies. The Rev Man 5.4 software was used to analyze the pulmonary function parameters of the included literature. Results: A total of 16 literatures were included, including 968 AIS patients. The results of meta-analysis showed that compared with the control group, exercise therapy significantly improved the VC ［SMD=0.97, 95%CI 0.76 to 1.19, P<0.001］, FVC ［SMD=0.64, 95%CI 0.48 to 0.79, P<0.001］, FEV1 ［SMD=0.65, 95%CI (0.39, 0.91), P<0.001］, FEV1% ［MD=3.66, 95%CI 2.26 to 5.05, P<0.001, FEV1/FVC ［SMD=0.81, 95%CI 0.61 to 1.02, P<0.001］, and MVV ［MD=5.69, 95%CI 4.27 to 7.11, P<0.001］ in AIS patients. However, exercise therapy could not significantly improve FVC% ［MD=2.85, 95%CI-0.33 to 6.03, P=0.08］, PEF ［SMD=0.31, 95%CI -0.11 to 0.72, P=0.15］, and PEF% ［MD=2.70, 95%CI -6.08 to 11.49, P=0.55］ in AIS patients. The results of subgroup analysis showed that exercise therapy did not significantly improve FEV1 ［SMD=0.28, 95%CI -0.14 to 0.70, P=0.20］, FEV1/FVC ［SM =0.37, 95%CI -0.18 to 0.92, P=0.19］ in patients with mild AIS. The exercise therapy could not significantly improve FEV1 in AIS patients with intervention period less than 3 months ［SMD=0.36, 95%CI -0.02-0.74, P=0.07］. Conclusion: Exercise therapy can improve VC, FVC, FEV1, FEV1 / FVC, and MVV in AIS patients, but could not improve PEF, PEF% and FVC%. The improvement in FEV1 may be influenced by the severity of scoliosis and the intervention period, and the improvement in FEV1/FVC may be influenced by the severity of scoliosis. |
