Chest
Bronchoalveolar Lavage: Its Safety in Subjects with Mild Asthma
Section snippets
Normal Control Subjects
Twelve normal healthy volunteers from the New Haven area served as controls. Their mean± SD age was 25.0±5.2 years, and there were 11 males and 1 female. None smoked cigarettes or had experienced an acute illness in the four weeks prior to study. Chest roentgenograms were normal in all subjects prior to BAL. All denied any history of respiratory disease, including asthma.
Asthmatic Subjects
Ten persons (five males and five females) were studied. Their mean age was 27.1 ± 3.5 years; one currently smoked cigarettes.
RESULTS
Demographic details for all study subjects are shown in Table 1. There were no significant differences between groups with regard to sex, age, or number of subjects who smoked cigarettes. Asthmatic subjects underwent BAL with a similar amount of saline solution as normal subjects (315.6±19.2 ml vs 310±10.2 ml), and the percentage of lavage fluid recovered from both groups did not differ significantly (64.8 ±8.2 percent vs 71.5 ± 7.2 percent, respectively). Theophylline blood levels were within
DISCUSSION
The results of this study indicate that fiberoptic bronchoscopy with BAL can be performed with safety in patients with mild asthma. One of ten subjects did not have BAL performed because of bronchoscopically induced but mild bronchospasm which responded immediately to an inhaled bronchodilator drug. All other subjects had minor signs and symptoms related to bronchoscopy with BAL, but these findings were not different from those experienced by normal subjects.
We specifically chose for our study
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank Jacob Loke, M.D., for his assistance with pulmonary function testing, Herbert Reynolds, M.D., for his advice and critical review of the manuscript, and Mrs. Mae Day for secretarial assistance.
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Parker B. Francis Fellow of Puritan-Bennett Foundation. Work also suggested in part by The Charles E. Culpepper Foundation.