[Measurement of lung function in patients admitted to hospital with acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or asthma].

Introduction: Acute exacerbation of COPD or asthma leads to many acute hospital admissions every year. Even though the pathogenesis of these diseases differs, in both cases the cardinal manifestation is increased airway obstruction, which can be measured using peak expiratory flow measurement (PEF) or measurement of forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1).

Materials And Methods: In this paper we report on findings from the third examination of the project "The Good Medical Department", in which we investigated the prevalence of PEF and FEV1 measurements in patients admitted acutely because of exacerbation of asthma or COPD.