Use of Office Spirometry in Primary-Care Clinics

Early diagnosis and smoking cessation are the only effective ways to stop or delay the progression of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). It is true that primarycare physicians rarely use spirometry to establish the diagnosis of COPD in smokers or to detect COPD or asthma in patients with respiratory symptoms or signs. Recently, however, with the advances in the development of electrical devices, a new category of spirometry, "office spirometry", has been introduced. Office spirometry is a simple, safe, and noninvasive test. In addition, it takes only a few minutes for the patient and technician to perform office spirometry, which includes a few breathing maneuvers of a 6-second duration. Primary-care physicians are strongly encouraged to perform an office spirometry test in patients with respiratory symptoms such as chronic cough, sputum, wheezing, dyspnea or in patients over 45 years of age who report smoking cigarettes in order to detect COPD.