Functional Diagnosis (I)

Diagnosing the functional status of the lung and respiratory system generally requires several tests that measure or evaluate different aspects of respiratory system function. The ensemble of parameters provided by respiratory function tests composes a matrix of data. These data have their own meaning (usually in relation to predicted values) but also a meaning derived from internal relationships in the context of our pathophysiological knowledge, in opposition to numeric (or calculation) dependence. Therefore, functional changes in disease hardly ever affect a single parameter but, on the contrary, the whole functional situation is depicted by a more or less characteristic distortion of the functional matrix. The more complete the functional study, the more precise the functional diagnosis. Each parameter is, therefore, a piece in a complex puzzle with no predicted pattern, but one that we compose in order to make the pieces fit into a functional picture.

Read more