[Prediction of postoperative pulmonary function in the patient undergoing pneumonectomy using combined pulmonary...

A method to predict postoperative lung function following pneumonectomy has been used in 11 patients. Preoperative unilateral lung function can be predicted by combining the preoperative information on lung volumes obtained by spirometry with the distributional information obtained from ventilation and perfusion scintigrams in order to estimate lung function after pneumonectomy. There was a high degree of correlation between predicted and measured lung function for both FEV1 (r = 0.81, p less than 0.050, and FVC (r = 0.81, p less than 0.05). The postoperative FEV1 and FVC were within 200 ml of the predicted value in most of the patients. A more accurate and easy prediction of postoperative lung function is obtained using unilateral perfusion rather than ventilation scintigrams. We suggest that the combined the results of simple spirometric data and a quantitative right-vs-left perfusion lung scan using radioactive Tc-99m provides a simple non-invasive and accurate method for the pre-operative functional evaluation of the high risk patient.