Assessing airway inflammation in clinical practice – experience with spontaneous sputum analysis

BMC Pulmonary Medicine

Table 1 Results of retrospective analysis of spontaneous sputum samples

		Prior Probability (in %)	Posterior probability after sputum analysis (in %)
Final diagnosis	n		Eosinophilia	Neutrophilia
Healthy	3	0.6	0.0	0.0
Asthma/BHR	216	44.9	72.5	13.8
COPD/bronchitis	194	40.3	22.9	65.5
Pneumonia	16	3.3	0.0	13.8
Alveolar haemorrhage	4	0.8	0.0	0.0
Tumour suspicious	19	4.0	2.8	6.9
Others	29	6.0	1.8	0.0
Total	481	100	100	100
n corresponding to column		481	109	29

The table presents the percentages of patients according to final diagnosis (prior probabilities) as well as posterior probabilities according to the two major outcomes (eosinophilia and neutrophilia) of the semiquantitative sputum analysis. Only these two diagnostic categorie are shown, as numbers regarding other sputum findings were too low for statistical analysis.

ISSN: 1471-2466