How do you read a PFT with restrictive type spirometry but normal lung volumes?
What clinical significance does this have and how do you follow these patients?
Answer from: at Academic Institution
The pattern is indeed non-specific and can be associated with a range of pulmonary disorders, including both obstructive (e.g. asthma, COPD) and restrictive disorders (e.g. ILD, neuromuscular disease). In some patients, no specific etiology for their abnormal lung function can be determined.
Non-specific pattern. Initially, NEJM papers showed that these patients develop obstructive patterns in the long term but follow-up papers have shown that patients can stay in that pattern (non-specific) or develop restrictive or obstructive patterns.
Comments
at Dupage Medical Group It used to be a “nonspecific” pattern,...
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