The value of pulmonary function tests in respiratory diseases

Abstract

Physicians treating patients with respiratory'diseases have come to realise the importance of estimating the functional disorder in their patients in addition to elucidating the morbid changes and the etiology of the disease. This attitude is very similar to that adopted in relation to cardiac and renal disease where knowledge of the functional state is so essential from the point of view of treatment and prognosis. Respiratory function tests are used in clinical practice for two main purposes, one to aid diagnosis and the other to estimate the degree of functional disability in assessing progress and the results of treatment.