Non-uniform pulmonary diffusion as demonstrated by the carbon monoxide equilibration technique: experimental results in man.

Available evidence indicates that pulmonary diffusion is distributed in a non-uniform manner throughout the lung; the pertinent literature was reviewed briefly in the preceding paper of this series (1). Conventional methods for measuring the pulmonary diffusing capacity do not allow a quantitative assessment of this non-uniformity, and, in the presence of uneven diffusion, may yield erroneous values for total DL.1 This prob-