A study of airflow patterns among patients attending a hospital set up in Manipur

Abstract

Background: Clinicians and surgeons often require instant knowledge of the lung function of their patients during the course of their management though they rely on the symptoms most of the time. Yet unexpected, abnormal respiratory airflow patterns are found in various diseases which affect the management whereas many respiratory complaints used to turn out to be normal. Respiratory symptoms often but not always correlate with airflow abnormality, thus making office spirometry an important tool for addressing these problems. Aims and Objectives: An evaluation of the profile of airflow patterns observed among patients attending regional institute of medical sciences (RIMS) hospital, Manipur, is carried out. Materials and Methods: The spirometry test performances of total 221 patients (120 males and 101 females) aged between 11 and 80 years sent from outpatient and wards of different departments of our hospital (RIMS Imphal, Manipur) were done after taking informed consents. The period of test performance was from June 2016 to November 2018 on all working days in the department of physiology. For this, a computerized spirometer (Helios model no. 401) was used. Results: 176 (79.6% of the total studied) patients presented with symptoms of respiratory diseases and after spirometry test, 121 (54.7% of the total) were having different patterns of abnormal airflow. About 60% of 111 patients complaining only of breathlessness are found to have normal lung function. Among 13 patients with a common disease such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, unexpectedly 2 cases of restrictive type of airflow and another 2 patients with normal airflow were found. Conclusion: Awareness of such altered and unexpected occurrence in lung spirometry epidemiology would be informative to the physicians in disease management.