Recently, Academician Zhong Nanshan and Professor Li Shiyue have organized a research team to verify in human body the reliability of applying the EB-OCT technology with Bronchofiberscope to evaluate the airway reshaping degree. On this basis, the team further included 48 cases of COPD patients at different ratings, 21 heavy smoking patients with normal pulmonary functions and 17 cases of patients who have never smoke, and collected the medical history, measured the forced vital capacity and tested the chest CT and EB-OCT among the patients of COPD. The research mainly pays attention tot he differences of COPD patients, heavy smokers and normal people in the reshaping degrees of bronchus at each level (Level 3 to 9).

The importance of the research is due to it has verified the clinical values of EB-OCT in judging the small airway reshaping of COPD patients and heavy smokers. Though the conventional indicator of forced vital capacity is indeed relevant to a certain extent with the clinical rating of COPD, the evaluation indicator of EB-OCT is more of value for reflecting the rating of COPD. It has also discovered distinctive small airway reshaping among heavy smokers. Though not all smokers will develop COPD, smoking at least is an important factor to trigger airway reshaping. This will provide an important basis for clinicians to persuade smoking patients to give up smoking.

This paper has been officially published on the respiratory journal Chest.

The link of the whole text:

http://journal.publications.chestnet.org/article.aspx?articleID=2545770