Exercise Pulmonary Function Test in Preresection and Postresection of the Lung due to Malignancy - follow up after 4 weeks and 6 months / 대한내과학회지

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.