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Updated: Jun 13, 2025

Conducting Respiratory Oscillometry in an Outpatient Setting
Published on: April 8, 2022
Role of oscillometry to diagnose obstructive airway diseases in patients who are unable to perform spirometry
Priyanka Singh1, Nitin Balram Ahuja2, S V S Krishna3
1Graded Specialist (Respiratory Medicine), Military Hospital, Namkum, India.
Background:
Obstructive airway diseases (OAD) are an important contributor to the burden of respiratory diseases in India. The current gold standard to diagnose OAD is spirometry. However, spirometry is a forceful manoeuvre and many patients are unable to perform it as per correct standard acceptable criteria. Therefore, patients are sometimes misdiagnosed or undiagnosed leading to a delay in treatment. Therefore, a study was conducted with an aim to assess the role of forced oscillometry in diagnosing obstructive disease.
Methods:
A cross -sectional study was carried out from Jun 2019-Jun 2021 at a tertiary care chest centre, where consecutively 102 patients who were unable to perform spirometry correctly or had a contraindication to it were evaluated by oscillometry for OAD.
Results:
Out of 102 patients who could not perform spirometry, OAD was detected in 84.4 %. 42.2 % of patients were diagnosed with asthma and similarly 42.2 % of patients were diagnosed to have Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The Mean (R5) Rrs at 5 Hz of the study population were 6.69 cmH2O/L/s for asthma, 5.91 cmH2O/L/s for COPD, and 3.16 cmH2O/L/s in a healthy population respectively. Mean R19 for Asthma, COPD and healthy individuals were 4.45 cmH20/L/s, 3.92 cmH20/L/s and 2.547 cmH20/L/s respectively. (X5) Xrs at 5 Hz of the study population were -3.16 cmH2O/Ls in asthma, -3.33 cmH2O/L/s in COPD, and -0.975 cmH2O/L/s in healthy individuals, respectively.
Conclusion:
Oscillometry is a pulmonary function test which can be performed easily and it can help in diagnosing OAD.
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