Pulmonary Function Test
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Pulmonary Function Test
PULMONARY FUNCTION TEST
Pulmonary function tests are a group of tests that measure how well the lungs take in and release air and how well they move gases such as oxygen from the atmosphere into the body’s circulation.The tests can determine the cause of shortness of breath and may help confirm lung diseases, such as asthma, bronchitis or emphysema. The tests also are performed before any major lung surgery to make sure the person won’t be disabled by having a reduced lung capacity.
Lung volume measurement detects restrictive lung diseases. In this set of diseases, a person cannot inhale a normal volume of air. Restrictive lung diseases may be caused by inflammation or scarring of the lung tissue (interstitial lung disease) or by abnormalities of the muscles or skeleton of the chest wall.
Testing the diffusion capacity (also called the DLCO) permits an estimate of how efficiently the lungs transfer oxygen from the air into the bloodstream.
Why Are Pulmonary Function Tests Done?
Testing your lungs can help doctors diagnose lung diseases such as:
- Asthma
- Allergies
- Chronic bronchitis
- Chronic obstructive
- pulmonary disease (COPD)
- Damaged or scarred lung tissue
- Disease caused by breathing in asbestos fibers
- collection of inflammatory cells around organs
- Lung cancer
- Infections
- Thickened, stretched, or enlarged airways
- Thickening or hardening of your connective tissues
- Weakness of the muscles in the wall of the chest.
Spirometry
This is one of the most common pulmonary function tests. Spirometry measures how much air you can breathe in and out. It also measures how fast you can empty the air out of your lungs.
Spirometry helps diagnose breathing problems such as asthma and COPD
The results will let you know if you’re less able to breathe normally.
The score tells your doctor how severe your breathing problem is.
This is the amount of air exhaled forcefully and quickly after inhaling as much as you can.
This is the amount of air expired during the first, second, and third seconds of the FVC test.
maximum voluntary ventilation (MVV) .Formerly referred to as maximum breathing capacity, is a pulmonary function test (PFT) that measures the maximum amount of air a person can inhale and then exhale with voluntary effort.
We are the one of the first day care clinic in Ahmedabad having DLCO machine.
The DLCO measures the ability of the lungs to transfer gas from inhaled air to the red blood cells in pulmonary capillaries.
USE of DLCO:
For the of early cases Lung Fibrosis and Pulmonary hypertension
A low DLCO indicates a loss of vasculature, as seen in COPD; or pulmonary vascular disease (ie, chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension
A high DLCO on a PFT is most frequently associated with large lung volumes, obesity, and
asthma.
Other conditions are much less common. A clinical condition, which typically reduces DLCO, may deceptively normalize DLCO in such patients.