Confirmatory spirometry for adults hospitalized with a diagnosis of asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease exacerbation

BMC Pulmonary Medicine

Research Article

Carlos A Camargo Jr¹  Frank Huang²  Valerie G Press²  Edward T Naureckas²  Valentin Prieto Centurion³  Jeffrey Charbeneau³  Min J Joo³  Jerry A Krishnan⁴ 

[1] Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA;University of Chicago Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA;University of Illinios at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA;University of Illinios at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA;University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System, Medical Center Administration Building, MC 973, 914 S. Wood Street, 60612, Chicago, IL, USA;

关键词: Asthma;    COPD;    Exacerbation;    Hospitalization;    Spirometry;    Quality improvement;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2466-12-73

 received in 2012-07-17, accepted in 2012-11-29,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundObjective measurement of airflow obstruction by spirometry is an essential part of the diagnosis of asthma or COPD. During exacerbations, the feasibility and utility of spirometry to confirm the diagnosis of asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are unclear. Addressing these gaps in knowledge may help define the need for confirmatory testing in clinical care and quality improvement efforts. This study was designed to determine the feasibility of spirometry and to determine its utility to confirm the diagnosis in patients hospitalized with a physician diagnosis of asthma or COPD exacerbation.MethodsMulti-center study of four academic healthcare institutions. Spirometry was performed in 113 adults admitted to general medicine wards with a physician diagnosis of asthma or COPD exacerbation. Two board-certified pulmonologists evaluated the spirometry tracings to determine the proportion of patients able to produce adequate quality spirometry data. Findings were interpreted to evaluate the utility of spirometry to confirm the presence of obstructive lung disease, according to the 2005 European Respiratory Society/American Thoracic Society recommendations.ResultsThere was an almost perfect agreement for acceptability (κ = 0.92) and reproducibility (κ =0.93) of spirometry tracings. Three-quarters (73%) of the tests were interpreted by both pulmonologists as being of adequate quality. Of these adequate quality tests, 22% did not present objective evidence of obstructive lung disease. Obese patients (BMI ≥30 kg/m2) were more likely to produce spirometry tracings with no evidence of obstructive lung disease, compared to non-obese patients (33% vs. 8%, p = 0.007).ConclusionsAdequate quality spirometry can be obtained in most hospitalized adults with a physician diagnosis of asthma or COPD exacerbation. Confirmatory spirometry could be a useful tool to help reduce overdiagnosis of obstructive lung disease, especially among obese patients.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Centurion et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.