Your doctor is likely to ask you questions about your symptoms, specifically coughing, how much mucus you produce, and whether you smoke. The answers to these questions will indicate whether you are at risk of COPD, but your doctor will then want to confirm the diagnosis by doing tests to check how well the lungs are working. The name of the main test is spirometry. During spirometry you will be asked to blow very hard into a tube that is connected to a machine known as a spirometer.
The spirometer takes two main measurements:
- Forced Vital Capacity (FVC) is the total volume of air that can be breathed out of the lungs with maximum effort in one breath.
- Forced Expiratory Volume (FEV1) is a measure of how much of this air is breathed out in the first second.
The spirometer gives an accurate picture of how much air is able to move into and out of the lungs during normal breathing, which shows whether airways are obstructed.
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