Feasibility of transcranial magnetic stimulation adjuvant therapy for chronic respiratory diseases: a narrative review.
Rui Xu, Geyi Wen, Yuhong Wang and 5 others
PMID 42136989WHAT IT FOUND
TMS is a safe, non-invasive tool for assessing diaphragm nerve pathways and is being explored as an add-on therapy for breathlessness in chronic lung disease.
Current evidence is mechanistic and preclinical, with no large clinical trials yet proving it improves respiratory outcomes in these patients.
Key findings
01TMS is primarily used to assess the integrity of neural pathways to the diaphragm by measuring motor-evoked potentials, helping distinguish central from peripheral respiratory dysfunction.
02While TMS shows promise for modulating respiratory drive and anxiety in lung disease, clinical evidence for its therapeutic efficacy in chronic respiratory diseases remains insufficient and requires larger trials.
03TMS has a favorable safety profile, with serious adverse effects like seizures being extremely rare and side effects typically limited to transient headache or scalp discomfort.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
This is a narrative review, not a systematic review or meta-analysis, so the selection of studies may be biased and does not provide a comprehensive statistical summary of effect sizes. Most evidence for therapeutic benefit comes from animal models or small studies in patients with neurological injuries (stroke, spinal cord injury), not the primary chronic respiratory diseases (COPD, asthma) the title suggests. The authors explicitly state that clinical evidence for TMS efficacy in chronic respiratory diseases is insufficient and that long-term follow-up data is missing. Technical challenges such as coil positioning, signal noise, and the depth of the diaphragm limit the reliability of TMS as a clinical assessment tool in routine practice.
Declared interests
The authors declared financial support for the work from the Open Project of Yunnan Province Clinical Medical Research Center for Respiratory Diseases and the Xing Dian Talent Physician Support Program.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret this review as evidence that TMS is an effective treatment for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or asthma. The therapeutic benefits described are largely mechanistic or derived from small studies in stroke and spinal cord injury patients, and the authors state that clinical evidence for respiratory diseases is currently insufficient.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →