Category pftblog

In patients with lung disease the use of supplemental oxygen during exercise increases oxygen consumption, endurance time and maximum workload, and decreases the sensation of dyspnea without increa…

Although we routinely use mouthpieces, noseclips and occasionally masks for our testing, all of these alter respiration in one way or another. Opto-electronic plethysmography (OEP) is a completely …

Since I started performing exercise tests I’ve used both treadmills and bicycle ergometers. There are a several reasons that make ergometers somewhat better for exercise testing than treadmil…

Reports are how patient test results are distributed. Paper versions have become less common because reports are now stored electronically in hospital information systems. Even if the way in which …

I was reviewing PFT reports today and noticed that a patient appeared to have had the wrong gender entered in their demographic information. Specifically, the patient had an unambiguously masculine…

Recently a patient was referred to my lab for a CPET by his oncologist. The patient had been complaining of excessive shortness of breath particularly when climbing only a few stairs. The patient r…

The static respiratory pressures, Maximal Inspiratory Pressure (MIP or PIMAX) and Maximal Expiratory Pressure (MEP or PEMAX) are a way to non-invasively assess respiratory muscle strength. Respirat…

I was reading James Hansen’s textbook on pulmonary function testing (one of my more interesting reads lately) and in passing he mentioned using the VA/TLC ratio as a way to measure ventilatio…

Recently I reviewed a set of completely irreproducible spirometry results. The patient had made eight attempts and the FVC, FEV1 and Peak Flow were different every time. In particular, there were f…

I was reviewing a spirometry report and noticed something odd about the flow-volume loop, or more specifically the tidal loop, and this got me to thinking about what tidal loops can tell us about t…