Abstract
Educational aims
To examine the role of clinical exercise testing in the prognostic evaluation of patients with chronic lung heart diseases.
To discuss the prognostic importance of variables in the evaluation of patients with chronic lung and heart disease.
Summary Resting pulmonary function measurements have been shown to be of great value in the prognosis of a wide range of pulmonary and cardiac diseases. However, they cannot show the whole picture.
Exercise testing, and its associated variables, can provide useful prognostic information in diseases including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), interstitial lung disease (ILD), cystic fibrosis (CF), primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH) and chronic heart failure (CHF).
- ©ERS 2009