Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To determine whether air trapping (expressed as the percentage of air trapping relative to total lung volume [AT%]) correlates with clinical and functional parameters in children with obliterative bronchiolitis (OB). METHODS: CT scans of 19 children with OB were post-processed for AT% quantification with the use of a fixed threshold of -950 HU (AT%950) and of thresholds selected with the aid of density masks (AT%DM). Patients were divided into three groups by AT% severity. We examined AT% correlations with oxygen saturation (SO2) at rest, six-minute walk distance (6MWD), minimum SO2 during the six-minute walk test (6MWT_SO2), FVC, FEV1, FEV1/FVC, and clinical parameters. RESULTS: The 6MWD was longer in the patients with larger normal lung volumes (r = 0.53). We found that AT%950 showed significant correlations (before and after the exclusion of outliers, respectively) with the clinical score (r = 0.72; 0.80), FVC (r = 0.24; 0.59), FEV1 (r = -0.58; -0.67), and FEV1/FVC (r = -0.53; r = -0.62), as did AT%DM with the clinical score (r = 0.58; r = 0.63), SO2 at rest (r = -0.40; r = -0.61), 6MWT_SO2 (r = -0.24; r = -0.55), FVC (r = -0.44; r = -0.80), FEV1 (r = -0.65; r = -0.71), and FEV1/FVC (r = -0.41; r = -0.52). CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that AT% correlates significantly with clinical scores and pulmonary function test results in children with OB.