title: Potential Role of Lung Ventilation Scintigraphy in the Assessment of COPD.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To highlight the importance of the lung ventilation scintigraphy (LVS) to study the regional distribution of lung ventilation and to describe most frequent abnormal patterns of lung ventilation distribution obtained by this technique in COPD and to compare the information obtained by LVS with the that obtained by traditional lung function tests.
  
  
  METHODS
  The research was done in 20 patients with previously diagnosed COPD who were treated in Intensive care unit of Clinic for pulmonary diseases and TB "Podhrastovi" Clinical Center, University of Sarajevo in exacerbation of COPD during first three months of 2014. Each patient was undergone to testing of pulmonary function by body plethysmography and ventilation/perfusion lung scintigraphy with radio pharmaceutics Technegas, 111 MBq Tc -99m-MAA. We compared the results obtained by these two methods.
  
  
  RESULTS
  All patients with COPD have a damaged lung function tests examined by body plethysmography implying airflow obstruction, but LVS indicates not only airflow obstruction and reduced ventilation, but also indicates the disorders in distribution in lung ventilation.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  LVS may add further information to the functional evaluation of COPD to that provided by traditional lung function tests and may contribute to characterizing the different phenotypes of COPD.
authors.affiliation: Clinic for pulmonary disease and TB "Podhrastovi", Clinical center of Sarajevo University.
authors.forename: Vesna
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Cukic
authors.affiliation: Institute for nuclear medicine, Clinical center of Sarajevo University.
authors.forename: Amela
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Begic
keywords: COPD; LVS; lung functional tests