Authors' response to “Resting diffusing capacity and severity of radiographic disease predict gas exchange abnormalities with exercise in former US coal miners”

Le résumé fourni par la source

The authors would like to thank Dr. Miller for his insightful comments on our recent study evaluating the relationships between resting lung function, exercise gas exchange, and radiographic pneumoconiosis severity among US coal miners.1 He eloquently places our work in historical context, reminding us that similar findings were reported decades ago in asbestos workers. Over the past 40 years, lung diffusing capacity equipment has become cheaper, smaller, more portable, and easily suited to testing in nonhospital environments, making this recommendation even more practicable.2 His work, and now ours, underscore our shared recommendation that it is well past due for DLCO to be added to routine medical surveillance of mineral-dust-exposed workers. We also agree with Dr. Miller that low-dose chest CT scanning for worker medical surveillance is more sensitive, more specific, and now entails a radiation dose approaching that of plain chest radiography. NIOSH and the ILO are working to develop CT-based standard images, training, and certification, priorities that will help bring worker medical surveillance into the 21st century. John Meyer declares that he has no conflict of interest in the review and publication decision regarding this article. Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.