CASE FOR DIAGNOSIS A 46-year-old female with dyspnoea, stridor and

A 46-yr-old female presented to the chest clinic with chronic dry cough and increasing dyspnoea on exertion. The patient’s symptoms had deteriorated over the past 15 months and, at presentation, the patient developed dyspnoea after only 50 yards of walking. She had experienced multiple emergency department visits and frequent admissions to the hospital because of breathing difficulties. Also, during the last year, she experienced recurrent respiratory infections with a frequency of one to two infections per month. The patient received a diagnosis of bronchial asthma and was treated with short courses of systemic steroids, multiple inhalers and courses of antibiotics; resulting in only mild and temporary improvement in her symptoms. Pulmonary function tests (PFTs) 15 months earlier had shown a forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) of 1.5 L (84 % predicted)