Category pftblog

While reviewing reports today I ran across a couple of lung volume tests from different patients where the SVC was over a liter less than the FVC. Suboptimal SVC measurement can affect both the TLC…

I’ve been interested in ventilation inhomogeneity for a while and as ways to measure it I have looked at VA/TLC ratios, the Lung Clearance Index (LCI) and the phase III slope of the single-br…

When I first started performing CPETs in the 1970’s a patient’s exhaled gas was collected at intervals during the test in Douglas bags and I had a worksheet that I’d use to record…

Recently a reader asked me a question about the FVC/DLCO ratio. To be honest I’d never heard of this ratio before which got me intrigued so I spent some time researching it. What I found leav…

I was reviewing a spirometry report last week and when I went to compare the results with the patient’s last visit I noticed that the FVC and FEV1 hadn’t changed significantly. However,…

A couple of days ago my medical director and I had a short discussion about teaching pulmonary fellows to read PFTs and agreed that in order to be good at interpreting PFTs it isn’t the basic…

I like to think my lab is better than most but every so often something comes along that makes me realize I’m probably only fooling my self. Earlier this week I was reviewing the DLCO test da…

Most of the COPD patients that are seen in my lab tend to have little change in their FEV1 from visit to visit but their FVC often changes significantly. A change in FVC is usually related to how l…

We recently performed a 6-minute walk test with helium-oxygen (heliox) for a patient of one of the physicians that specializes in airway stenting. His reasons for the test weren’t particularl…

While reading a recently published article I found they had performed response to hypoxia and hyperoxia testing as part of the study. At one time or another in the past I’ve read about respon…