emphysema

Hi, ! This is a great question for , or Leon. I'm sure when they see this that they will be happy to help you understand that better. Best, Jackie (Moderator)

Thank you. This is all new to me, and I don't even know what to think or where to start! I hope to find a lot of good information and support here.

Hi. Thank you for your post and your great question. As you can see by this post (https://copd.net/clinical/diffusion-test) DLCO is a measure of how well oxygen travels through your lungs and blood stream. A lower DLCO can help diagnose COPD. And it can also help show how severe your lung disease is. However, it is not necessarily an indicator of prognosis or how long you will live. My colleague Jackie does a good job of explaining this in this post (https://copd.net/living/living-with-stage-four). Does this brief explanation ;helpful? John. community moderator.

Yes, thank you! That helps some in terms of explaining, but I was looking for reassurance and I actually feel more scared now. When they told me the DLCO was "severe" I asked does this Stage 4, and they would not answer the question. It sounds like you are saying that severely low DLCO is, by definition, Stage 4. I don't want to get hung up on the numbers, but I also want to be realistic.