[Usefulness of the exercise test with measurement of symptom-limited oxygen consumption (V02SL) in evaluating exertion tolerance in patients with chronic pulmonary diseases].

An analysis on objectiveness of assessing symptom limited oxygen consumption (VO2SL) registered during exercise tests of increasing load of 30W every 3 minutes in 86 patients with chronic pulmonary diseases and 30 healthy control subjects. 36 did not have any ventilatory disorders, 50 had lowered ventilatory efficiency. VO2SL differed significantly in both study groups and the control. It was 1.80 L x min-1 in patients without ventilatory disturbances, 1.52 L x min-1 in patients with ventilatory disturbances and 2.12 L x min-1 in the control. The test was exceptable. In most of the subjects the results were repeatable, correlation indexes between the first and next assessment was 0.88, 0.95 and 0.83. Variance analysis did not differ between groups. The study demonstrated usefulness of VO2SL in determining exercise tolerance and in diagnosing patients with chronic pulmonary diseases.