Well, we returned to Stanford and finally had Gwena's second pulmonary function test, or PFT. She is now done with her clinical trial, and has a real prescription for the study drug, hypertonic saline! Here are her PFT numbers for last year and this year:
| last year | this year |
| FVC, ml | 91% | 76% |
| FEV 0.5, ml | 80% | 81% |
| FEV 0.5/FVC | 88% | 106% |
| FEF 25, ml/sec | 76% | 97% |
| FEF 50, ml/sec | 59% | 103% |
| FEF 75, ml/sec | 56% | 73% |
| FEF 85, ml/sec | 57% | 11% |
| FEF 25-75, ml/sec | 57% | 96% |
They told me for the ones that went down, they think she was closing her glottis and the result wasn't accurate. Most of the numbers went up! Yay!
Last year's report said, "Early obstructive changes at the small airway level and with evidence for air trapping."
This year's report says, "Fairly normal flows and volumes without evidence for obstruction."
YES!!!
We don't officially know yet whether we had the real hypertonic saline (7%) or the control drug, isotonic saline (0.9%), but I will be very surprised if they say she had the control.
Hypertonic saline is a pretty new treatment for CF (the
study on it was published in 2006) and this is the first time it's been studied in kids under age 6. I think it's an amazing thing and I'm so glad Gwena was able to start on it at such an early age!
