Induced sputum cell counts: their usefulness in clinical practice

Induced sputum cell counts: their usefulness in clinical practice.

Airway inflammation is fundamental to the aetiology and persistence of asthma and other airway conditions. The presence and type of airway inflammation can be difficult to detect clinically, delaying the introduction of appropriate treatment. Induced sputum cell counts are a relatively noninvasive, safe and reliable method of identifying airway inflammation. They can accurately discriminate eos...

Induced sputum cell counts in medical practice.

Induced sputum cell counts in healthy adults.

Induced sputum cell counts provide a relatively noninvasive method to evaluate the presence, type, and degree of inflammation in the airways of the lungs. Their interpretation requires a knowledge of normal values from a healthy population. The objective was to examine the total and differential cell counts in induced sputum from a sample of healthy adults. A total of 118 healthy nonsmoking adu...

Determination of the inflammatory component of airway diseases by induced sputum cell counts: use in clinical practice.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the usefulness of determining the inflammatory component of airway diseases (inflammometry) by induced sputum cell counts, as well as its influence on treatment decisions in a tertiary facility for the treatment of respiratory diseases. METHODS We analyzed 151 sputum samples from 132 consecutive patients referred for clinical sputum induction by five pulmonologists betwe...

Clinical judgement of airway inflammation versus sputum cell counts in patients with asthma.

The inflammatory component of asthma is usually assessed indirectly by symptoms and spirometry, these may be inaccurate. It can now be assessed directly and reliably by the examination of sputum cell counts. There is no information on how clinical assessment of the presence and type of airway inflammation compares with actual measurements. In this single-centre observational study, sputum was c...