What are pulmonary function tests?

What are pulmonary function tests?

Richard Sheldon (Medical Advisor to the CA State Respiratory Care Board) gives expert video advice on: Why would my doctor order peak flow testing?; How is a DCLO or diffusion capacity test performed? and more...

Pulmonary function tests are the main tool that pulmonologists use to diagnose pulmonary diseases and they are easily accomplished tests. Sometimes it's done in the primary care physician's office in what we call a very simple spirometry or a blow and go, where you take a deep breath, blow into a machine, and go, but the pulmonary function studies done by a pulmonologist in a pulmonary function lab take about an hour. They require the patient to be able to sit and breathe at different rates, take deep breaths, and blow them out as fast as possible. That generates an enormous amount of information about the different compartments in the lung, we look at all that data then we can say "This patient has primarily an obstructive lung disease and this is where the obstruction occurs, small airways, large airways or he has a restrictive lung disease which would be an interstitial lung disease" and the data tells us a lot of information about severity, prognosis, and gives us an opportunity to tailor make therapy for the patient.