Among the tools we use to evaluate and diagnose lung disease, are:
- Blood tests
- Bronchoscopy allows your doctor to look inside your airways. A bronchoscope is a thin tube with a camera on its end. The bronchoscope is introduced into your nose or mouth, and guided through the airways, and sends images of the airways to a computer screen. These images help your doctor to diagnose lung disease, tumors, and infections.
- Chest X-ray
- Lung Biopsy can be performed during a bronchoscopy. Your doctor can take tiny samples of lung tissue that will be evaluated for cancer, infections, or other conditions.
- Lung CT scanning uses X-rays to look at lung structure and to examine the lungs for a tumor that might be too small to be seen by X-ray.
- Pulmonary Function Tests are used to measure amount of air your lungs can hold, how the lungs react in response to certain drugs, and how the lung transfers gases (like carbon monoxide) across its walls and into the blood stream.
- Polysomnography is a study commonly used for the diagnosis of sleep disorders
- Positron emission tomography (PET) uses small amounts of radioactive material that help to show where cancer is located, and areas where it might have spread.
- Spirometry is a type of pulmonary function test that assesses narrowing of the airways. You breathe into a tube for several minutes and the amount of air you move into and out of your lungs—and the speed of the air’s movement—is measured.