BMC pulmonary medicine
-
BMC pulmonary medicine · Feb 2014
Relationship between CT air trapping criteria and lung function in small airway impairment quantification.
Small airways are regarded as the elective anatomic site of obstruction in most chronic airway diseases. Expiratory computed tomography (CT) is increasingly used to assess obstruction at this level but there is no consensus regarding the best quantification method. We aimed to evaluate software-assisted CT quantification of air trapping for assessing small airway obstruction and determine which CT criteria better predict small airway obstruction on single breath nitrogen test (SBNT). ⋯ Among all CT criteria, all correlating with small airway obstruction on SBNT, E/I MLD was the most suitable criterion for its expression in asymptomatic subjects with mild small airway obstruction