SPECIAL REPORT: ADVANCES IN LUNG FUNCTION ASSESSMENT TECHNOLOGY
Big Insights from Small Airwaves Airwave Oscillometry Shapes New Perspectives on Pulmonary Function Testing Thomas F. Schuessler, Ph.D., THORASYS Thoracic Medical Systems Inc. info@thorasys.com, +44 800 086 9837, www.thorasys.co.uk
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SCILLOMETRY, ALSO known as the Forced Oscillation Technique (FOT), was first published in 1956 and has for a long time been used by a select group of researchers for effortless, detailed measurements of respiratory function. However, it is only in recent years that a wider audience is beginning to recognize its value as a sensitive, precise technology for the assessment of large and small airway function during regular, quiet breathing. What has changed?
Recent Developments
any other FOT device, it’s easy to deploy the tremoflo wherever respiratory assessment may be the most needed – not only in the PFT lab, but also at the doctor’s office, clinic, hospital ward or emergency room, and potentially even in nursing homes, pharmacies or right in the patient’s home. Second, usability. Oscillometry has always been easy for the subject being measured: it requires only quiet breathing without coordinated manoeuvre (Figure 2), so measurements are readily obtained from subjects ranging from wheezing pre-schoolers to elderly patients with severe COPD. Unfortunately, this enormous advantage was often lost because past FOT systems required highly skilled operators to tease valid outcomes out of complex software. Here too, the easy-to-use tremoflo software breaks new ground: after brief training, new users rapidly succeed at obtaining a complete set of three valid measurements in less than three minutes, even in patients who are unable to perform spirometry. The tremoflo software even automatically recognises and excludes artefacts such as swallowing or leaks without user intervention.
As device manufacturers specialized in this field, we will continue to strive to make Oscillometry devices even smaller, cheaper and more accessible to a wide range of doctors, health care professionals and patients
Figure 1
For one, the equipment. Traditional FOT devices used loudspeakers to create the gentle oscillatory waves superimposed on the patient’s spontaneous breathing. This resulted in bulky, stationary equipment with long “inertance tubes” and noisy fans to wash out the dead space that were, indeed, best suited for the research lab. The novel tremoflo® Airwave Oscillometry System (AOS, Figure 1) is a game-changer in this regard: using a patented vibrating mesh technology that creates the oscillatory wave right in front of the patient’s mouth, the tremoflo packages a state-of-the-art Oscillometry system in a compact, handheld form factor that is by far the smallest and lightest on the market. Unlike
Figure 2
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