Category pftblog

The ATS has released its first standard for reporting pulmonary function results. This report is in the December 1, 2017 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. At …

When lung volumes are measured in a plethysmograph the actual measurement is called the Thoracic Gas Volume (TGV). This is the volume of air in the lung at the time the shutter closes and the subje…

Yesterday while reviewing reports I ran across an interesting error in the Inspiratory Volume (VI) from a DLCO test. I’ve probably seen this before but this time I realized what effect it could hav…

My wife watches the Food Network a lot and I occasionally watch it with her but I can only take so much of it before I go off and read or work on one of my projects. I’ve noticed however in the var…

I was reviewing a report recently that included the results for walking oximetry. These showed that the individual has a resting SaO2 of 97% and desaturated significantly to 86% after walking a cou…

My medical director and I had a discussion today about where the cutoff for a normal FEV1/FVC ratio would be for a 93 year old patient of his. Part of the problem is that there are almost no refere…

The Global Lung Initiative (GLI) has been working for several years to develop a universal reference equation for DLCO. Although this endeavor is not necessarily complete, an article describing the…

Well, not necessarily anything, although as usual that depends on the circumstances. Recently I was contacted by an individual who was concerned that their DLCO had decreased from 120% of predicted…

I’ve been thinking about quality control and quality improvement lately. Mostly this has been about how to go about determining whether the lab has a quality problem with testing and what statistic…

The Lung Clearance Index (LCI) is a relatively simple test that provides a measure of ventilation inhomogeneity within the lung. This can be clinically useful information since several studies have…