Bronchoalveolar Lavage in the Normal Lung

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Abstract
Bronchoalveolar lavage, performed on 15 healthy volunteers, enabled quantification and characterization of the alveolar cell populations. The subjects studied were 8 nonsmokers (5 males, 3 females) and 7 smokers (6 males, 1 female). In the smokers the macrophages increased compared with nonsmokers, both in absolute number (419,000 vs. 138,000/ml; P < 0.005) and in percentage (93.8 .+-. 3.0 vs. 88.1 .+-. 4.8%, P < 0.02), causing a significant increase in the total number of cells recovered after bronchoalveolar lavage (471,000 vs. 163,000/ml; P < 0.005). Lymphocytes and neutrophils do not significantly vary in the 2 groups, even though among the smokers there is a tendency for the concentration of these cells to increase in the lavage liquids. The importance of the data obtained from healthy subjects lies in the possibility thus afforded of having reference values for the study of various lung pathologies with bronchoalveolar lavage.

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