Response patterns to bronchodilator and quantitative computed tomography in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Background: Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) show different spirometric response patterns to bronchodilator, such that some patients show improvement principally in expiratory flow (forced expiratory volume in 1 s; FEV1), whereas others respond by improvement of lung volume (forced vital capacity; FVC). The mechanisms of these different response patterns to bronchodilator remain unclear. We investigated the associations between bronchodilator responsiveness and quantitative computed tomography (CT) indices in patients with COPD.This study was supported by a grant of the Korea Healthcare Technology R&D Project, Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs, Republic of Korea (A040153) and by the Asan Institute for Life Science (07-057)