Fitness assessments for surgery: Lung functions

A lung function test is something you do in a specialist lab. It looks specifically at how quickly you can breathe in and how much you can breathe out. It looks at how well your lungs do this? There are several sets of numbers that we look at and it tells us about the forced expiratory volume, that's an important number, and the forced vital capacity, which tells us a lot about how much your lungs can hold in terms of gases. Percentages of these numbers will give us an idea of how well your lung function is. And again, there may be options where we can make it better by optimising you with medication, or it may be that you have disease process within your lungs that suggests that your lungs are not in the best state. And then it will help us make a decision with you as to the appropriate way to go forward with surgery.