I was reviewing a cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET) recently. The test was part of a pre-op workup for a patient with lung cancer who also had a diagnosis of COPD. I had looked at the spirometry…
The Global Lung Function Initiative (GLFI) was established by the European Respiratory Society in 2008 with the goal of establishing a truly worldwide set of reference equations for spirometry. Its…
It’s always fascinating how a simple problem can blossom into something much more complicated. Ninety-five percent of the time when we need to report post test results for spirometry they are…
Over forty years ago when I started to learn about pulmonary function testing I was taught about the nuts and bolts of the tests, not where the tests came from or how they came into existence. Spir…
I’ve had some concerns for a while now about how the CO and CH4 concentrations are being calculated from the DLCO analyzer calibration zero offsets and gains on our test systems. For this rea…
Expiratory flow limitation exists when increasing expiratory effort fails to increase the expiratory flow rate. This can been seen when a patient exhales along the same flow-volume curve during qui…
One of our testing systems has been leaking during the breath-holding period of DLCO tests. This has been an on-again, off-again problem caused by a leaking balloon valve. The odd thing about this …
The issue of PFT staff licensure or certification has recently been a topic of discussion on the LinkedIn Pulmonary Function Studies group and the Diagnostics section of the AARConnect discussion b…
FEV6 (the volume of air forcefully exhaled after 6 seconds) has been proposed as a replacement or surrogate for FVC in spirometry. Given that using FEV6 would simplify and speed up the spirometry t…
I’ll start by saying that I am not associated with Hans Rudolph Incorporated in any way. I just think they make a bunch of good products, and more specifically in this case, a DLCO simulator.…
