TY - JOUR T1 - Short term effects of chest physiotherapy in children with cystic fibrosis assessed by a new lung function test JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J VL - 40 IS - Suppl 56 SP - P1452 AU - Chiara Abbas AU - Florian Singer AU - Carmen Casaulta AU - Philipp Latzin Y1 - 2012/09/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/40/Suppl_56/P1452.abstract N2 - Background: No lung function test exists that is able to assess short-term effects of physiotherapeutic treatment (PT) in children with Cystic Fibrosis (CF). We recently developed a tidal single-breath washout (SBW) using two tracer gases to measure ventilation inhomogeneity (VI).Aims: We assessed whether this new SBW test is able to measure short-term effects of PT and inhalation.Methods: Children with CF (n=25) between 6 and 16 years performed lung-function assessments prior to and after inhalation and PT. Assessments consisted of a double tracer gas SBW (DTG-SBW) and spirometry. DTG contained sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) and helium (He), and was inhaled during tidal breathing. A side-stream ultrasonic flowmeter measured molar mass. DTG-SBW outcome was percentage of expired volume where expired molar mass equals inspired molar mass, reflecting inspired ratio of SF6 and He (IPDTG).Results: After intervention IPDTG decreased from 66.5% (±25.8) to 59.7% (±25.4) resulting in a mean difference of -7.3% (95%CI -12.9 to -1.8) and MEF25-75 increased from 1.41 L/s to 1.62 L/s resulting in a mean difference of 0.19 L/s (95%CI 0.02 to 0.37). In a post-hoc subgroup analysis we found that the DTG-SBW is more suited to detect changes in VI in patients with mild CF lung disease (n=14, FEV1 z-score >-2), whereas spirometry indexes increased only in patients with moderate CF lung disease (n=11, FEV1 z-score <-2).Conclusion: The DTG-SBW seems to be a promising test to detect short-term effects of physiotherapy and inhalation. ER -