Aging airways: Between normal and disease. A multidimensional diagnostic approach by combining clinical, functional, and imaging data

Abstract

The lack of data on lung function decline in the aging process as well as the lack of gold standards to define obstructive and restrictive respiratory disease in older people point out the need for a multidimensional assessment and interpretation of the aging airways. By integrating clinical data together with morphologic and morphometric findings clinicians can assess the airways with a more comprehensive perspective, helpful in the interpretation of the "grey zone" between normal aging and disease. This review focuses on the value of a multidimensional approach in the study of the aging airways, including clinical findings, respiratory function tests, and imaging as parts of a whole. Nowadays this multidimensional diagnostic approach can be used in daily clinical practice. In next future, it can be implemented by the analysis of exhaled gases, post-processing imaging techniques, and genetic analysis, that will hopefully reduce the gaps in knowledge of normal aging and airway disease in older people.