Direct bronchoprovocation test methods: history 1945-2018.

CONCLUSIONS: The methacholine inhalation test is highly sensitive for a diagnosis of current asthma when symptoms under evaluation are clinically current and when methacholine is inhaled without deep inhalations. Under these circumstances, a methacholine PD20 > 400 μg excludes current asthma with reasonable certainty. PD20 values >25 μg and ≤ 400 μg will have a variable specificity and positive predictive value for asthma which increases the lower the PD20 and the higher the pre-test probability for a diagnosis of asthma. A PD20 ≤ 25 μg has high specificity and low sensitivity for asthma. PMID: 30632426 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Expert Review of Respiratory Medicine - Category: Respiratory Medicine Tags: Expert Rev Respir Med Source Type: research