Korean J Med.
1998 Mar;54(3):341-347.
Exercise Pulmonary Function Test in Preresection and Postresection of the Lung due to Malignancy
- follow up after 4 weeks and 6 months
- Affiliations
-
- 1Department of Internal Medicine, Chonbuk National University Medical School, Chonju, Korea.
Abstract
OBJECTIVES
At present, the overall incidence of lung
cancer is increasing, causing the age-adjusted lung
cancer death rate to double every 15 years. Surgical
resection of the tumor offers the best prospect of
long-term survival in patients with lung cancer. Accurate
prediction of postoperative ventilatory function should be
helpful in determining in which patients the risk of
surgery are acceptable. Exercise pulmonary function test
has been widely applied to objective measure of work
capacity, and can be extremely helpful for investigating
exertional dyspnea. But no attempt is made to assess the
contribution of the lung to be resected to performance,
and it has been advocated as an additional predictor of
postoperative complications. The present investigation
was designed to evaluate the factors such as FEV1, FVC,
VEmax, Vo2max, anaerobic threshold, heart rate reserve,
breathing reserve and the corelation between FEV1 and
VO2max at 4 weeks and 6months after resection in
patients with lung cancer.
METHODS
The eighteen of patients with lung cancer
who considered surgically resectable underwent progre
ssively incremental exercise test to symptom-limited
stage before opera-tion, and also have done at surgical
resection after 4 weeks, and 6 momths. Measurements
were made of metabolic, cardiorespiratory, blood gases
and symptoms during exercise test.
RESULTS
1) There were significant decreases in FEV1,
FVC, VO2max, VE max in 4 weeks after operation and
were more decreased in FEV1, FVC, VE max with
significance, but fall in VO2max without significance in 6
month after operation. 2) There was a significant corre
lation between the decrease of FEV1 and that of VO2max
in 6 month after operation .
Conclusions
This result suggests that change of FEV1
is a relatively useful predictor of change in exercise
performance after lung resection in 6 month after
operation.