OBJECTIVE: To determine whether air trapping (expressed as the percentage of air
trapping relative to total lung volume [AT%]) correlates with clinical and
functional parameters in children with obliterative bronchiolitis (OB). METHODS: CT scans of 19 children with OB were post-processed for AT% quantification
with the use of a fixed threshold of −950 HU (AT%950) and of thresholds
selected with the aid of density masks (AT%DM). Patients were divided into
three groups by AT% severity. We examined AT% correlations with oxygen
saturation (SO2) at rest, six-minute walk distance (6MWD),
minimum SO2 during the six-minute walk test
(6MWT_SO2), FVC, FEV1, FEV1/FVC, and
clinical parameters. RESULTS: The 6MWD was longer in the patients with larger normal lung volumes (r =
0.53). We found that AT%950 showed significant correlations (before and
after the exclusion of outliers, respectively) with the clinical score (r =
0.72; 0.80), FVC (r = 0.24; 0.59), FEV1 (r = −0.58; −0.67), and
FEV1/FVC (r = −0.53; r = −0.62), as did AT%DM with the
clinical score (r = 0.58; r = 0.63), SO2 at rest (r = −0.40; r =
−0.61), 6MWT_SO2 (r = −0.24; r = −0.55), FVC (r = −0.44; r =
−0.80), FEV1 (r = −0.65; r = −0.71), and FEV1/FVC (r =
−0.41; r = −0.52). CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that AT% correlates significantly with clinical scores and
pulmonary function test results in children with OB.