Hello and welcome to the Zero Definals podcast.

My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about lung function tests.

If you want to follow along with written notes on this topic, you can follow along at

zero definals.com slash lung function tests or in the respiratory section of the zero to finals medicine book.

Let's get straight into it.

Lung function tests are used to help establish a diagnosis of lung disease

and they're particularly helpful when looking at obstructive or restrictive lung disease

where there are recognisable findings on these tests to help guide the

diagnosis. And this section is designed to give a simplified overview of lung function tests,

and there's a lot more to learn if you're interested and want to dive a bit deeper. So let's talk about

some of the basic outcome measures of lung function tests.

Spirometry is a test that's used to establish objective measures of lung function,

and it involves different breathing exercises that are done into a machine that measures the

volumes of air that's passing through it and the flow rates

and then produces a report.

Reversibility testing involves using a bronchodilator such as salbutamol

prior to repeating the spirometry test to see what impact the bronchidilator has on the results of the test.

The first outcome measure to talk about is FEV1.

And FEV1 means forced expiratory volume in one second.

And this is basically the amount of air a person can exhale as fast as they can in one second.

And this is a measure of the ability of the air to freely flow out of the lungs.

And this will be reduced if there's any obstruction to airflow out of the lungs.

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