What is Cystic Fibrosis
Cystic fibrosis, (CF) is a common hereditary human disease which affects many different parts of the body, including the lungs, pancreas, gastrointestinal tract, reproductive organ...
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I was wondering if anyone has ever heard of a chest x-ray or CAT scan being used to diagnose CF. The reason I am asking is because I was sent to a pulmonary specialist in March and he ordered those tests and said they would show him if I had CF. I had a sweat test when I was a baby and it came back negative but then I started having problems with sinus infections and bronchitis and he was the second doctor that CF popped into their head when trying to figure out what was wrong. I asked my aunt who had a daughter with CF that passsed away July 4 and she had never heard of it.
Posted on 10/05/09, 06:10 pm |
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There's nothing that a chest x-ray can show to definitively show if someone has CF. The sweat test is the only one that is considered even close to definitive. Even the DNA test isn't used sometimes because they haven't found all of the mutations that exist for CF, so you could get a false negative. Sweat tests can be redone, and the DNA testing could be done, especially if there is already CF in the family, they could look for that mutation, but because it's a cousin, there is still the question of the other side of the family. You have to have 2 copies of the defective gene to have CF, and if the other one were an unknown mutation, they wouldn't be able to detect it. The x-ray could give them information to treat you, just not enough to diagnose CF. 
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