Influence of bronchodilator usage for the cross-sectional area of small pulmonary vessels in COPD patients

Abstract

Background Inhalation of long acting muscarinic antagonists (LAMA) and long acting beta2 agonists (LABA) improve dyspnea in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients. Despite the improvements in dyspnea, we sometimes experience cases which pulmonary function tests show little improvement. On the other hand, as pulmonary blood flow volume decrease in COPD patients, there are few studies describing changes of pulmonary blood flow volume by inhalation treatment. Therefore, we measured the cross-sectional area (CSA) of small pulmonary vessels 2 and calculated the percentage of total CSA in the area of the lung (%CSA Methods In 25 patients with COPD, we evaluated %CSA Results For inhalation therapy, 6 patients used LAMA, while 12 patients used LABA alone. Seven patients used both LAMA and LABA. In the upper and lower lung, %CSA Conclusion Inhalation of bronchodilator increased %CSA