Abstract
All physicians, regardless of their types of practice, are seeing more patients with various forms of chronic lung disease. Pulmonary symptoms may be the primary complaint, or they may become apparent during another illness or after an operation. Pulmonary-function tests offer the means of elucidating the type of physiological impairment present, quantitating the degree of malfunction, and allowing for objective follow-up studies in the natural history of the disease and the efficacy of therapeutic measures. Tests of lung function vary from simple measurements of vital capacity to the use of gaseous radioactive isotopes for measurements of regional blood flow, ventilation, and gas exchange. The physician in practice should be able to interpret the results of ventilatory tests and arterial-blood gas analyses, and rely on the pulmonary physiologist and the chest physician for interpretation of the more refined tests of lung function. In this communication, lung-function tests will be reviewed briefly
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