An interesting study in the International Journal Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease traces the difficulties to differentiate asthma from COPD. Despite the availability of guideline recommendations, diagnostic confusion between COPD and asthma appears common, and often it is very difficult in a patient with airway obstruction to decide whether the obstruction is caused by asthma or COPD. The...

A new review study has been published in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness discussing the validity, reliability and principles of operations of existing portable open-circuit spirometry system. Portable open-circuit spirometry systems are widely used in the field of exercise physiology, especially in field settings when freedom of movement is required. With advances in technology,...

A new review paper on the Respiratory Medicine Journal confirms the impact of small airways dysfunction and inflammation in adult patients with asthma. This systematic literature review analyzes the prevalence of small airways disease (SAD) in adult patients with asthma, and to ascertain how SAD prevalence compares between different studies when measured using different methods of assessment. The...

A new article published on the Respiratory Care Journal highlight the clinical and diagnostic relevance of total lung volumes measurements in addition to spirometry. The present study was performed to evaluate how useful are different pulmonary function test (PFT) parameters to diagnose obstructive lung disease in subjects with a restrictive pattern of spirometry. The following parameters were...