WORTHINGTON -- A device that looks like a space-age phone booth has taken up residence in a second-floor room at Worthington Regional Hospital. This machine won't be used for communications, but can evaluate how well a person's lungs work. WRH is now offering complete pulmonary function testing.
"I started here in September last year, and I had done these tests in other hospitals before," explained Craig Goth, WRH respiratory therapy manager. "I saw that neither (Sanford or Avera Worthington Specialty Clinics) clinic nor (the hospital) did them, so I saw a need."
The pulmonary testing booth arrived in February, and since that time, Goth has conducted a dozen or so pulmonary function workups. Sanford Health offers a pulmonary clinic one day a month at WRH, and now patients won't have to be referred elsewhere for such tests. A spirometer is a smaller machine commonly found in doctors' offices and hospitals, but the new equipment provides more detailed information.
"What we are able to do with this machine over other ones is measure total lung capacity," Goth said. "The complete test takes one to one and a half hours. During the measuring time, the patient is going through a series of breathing tests."
Goth first inputs the patient's age, weight, height, gender and race, which determine a set of predicted values as to how much air that person should have in his or her lungs. The various tests then measure several aspects of lung capacity, resulting in raw data for that individual, and the numbers are compared. The data is then provided to the physician for evaluation.
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Lung function tests are used to: determine the cause of breathing problems; diagnose certain lung diseases, such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD); evaluate a person's lung function before surgery; monitor the lung function of a person who is regularly exposed to substances such as asbestos or chemicals that can damage the lungs; and monitor the effectiveness of treatment for lung diseases.
According to Goth, two main types of lung disease can be found with lung function tests such as what WRH now offers.
Obstructive lung disease is caused by conditions such as emphysema, bronchitis, infection, asthma and COPD. The airways are narrowed, increasing the time it takes to empty the lungs.
With restrictive lung conditions, there is a loss of lung tissue, a decrease in lungs' ability to expand or a decrease in the lungs' ability to transfer oxygen to the blood or carbon dioxide out of the blood. Restrictive lung disease can be caused by conditions including pneumonia, lung cancer, scleroderma, pulmonary fibrosis, sarcoidosis or multiple sclerosis; other restrictive conditions are chest injuries, obesity, pregnancy and loss of tissue due to surgery.
The pulmonary function testing is done upon physician order and can be conducted at WRH on an inpatient or outpatient basis. Other than having to sit inside the booth, a patient shouldn't suffer any discomfort during the testing process.
"It doesn't hurt at all, but people remember it because you're making them breathe in ways they don't usually breathe," Goth said.
Goth urges anyone who thinks they might benefit from complete pulmonary function testing to discuss it with their physician.
