Assessing airway inflammation in clinical practice - experience with spontaneous sputum analysis.

Background: The assessment of airway inflammation for the diagnosis of asthma or COPD is still uncommon in pneumology-specialized general practices. In this respect, the measurement of exhaled nitric oxide (NO), as a fast and simple methodology, is increasingly used. The indirect assessment of airway inflammation, however, does have its limits and therefore there will always be a need for methods enabling a direct evaluation of airway inflammatory cell composition.