Has this ever happened to you? You walk into a patient's room on postoperative day 1 and find the incentive spirometer still in its plastic wrap. And it's on a windowsill 10 feet from the patient's bed.
Here's another question. Does it matter?
A friend just had a 4-vessel CABG at a major academic center. Despite a lack of evidence that incentive spirometers are effective, he was told to use one in the hospital and to use it hourly at home which he has faithfully done.
That’s right. The effectiveness of incentive spirometry in postoperative cardiac and abdominal surgery patients has never been proven.
Three Cochrane Reviews (2007, 2012, 2014) have been done. In the 2014 review analyzing 12 studies with 1834 subjects who underwent abdominal surgery, the authors noted problems with study methodologies and lack of data on compliance with the use of spirometers. For preventing pulmonary complications, spirometry was not superior to deep breathing exercises or no respiratory intervention at all.
