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Department of Medicine
The Mass General Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing (CPET) Laboratory is a national referral center for evaluating symptoms that arise during physical activity. The CPET laboratory provides a wide variety of evaluations, ranging from resting measurements of metabolic rate to comprehensive exercise studies that rely on direct measurements of heart and lung performance to precisely define which organ system is limiting exercise capacity. The laboratory also serves as a core laboratory for the National Institutes of Health and performs leading edge research related to how to improve exercise capacity across a wide spectrum of patients with heart and lung conditions.
The primary purpose of cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) is to carefully assess how your lungs, heart, blood vessels and muscles perform during an exercise challenge. Measurement of the amount of oxygen your body can use during exercise along with other indices of heart and lung function provides important information about overall health status and prognosis for specific diseases. CPET is used to define how conditions that effect heart, lung, blood vessel or muscle function contribute to exercise intolerance.
These pulmonary function tests are performed while you exercise:
When you support the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, you are aiding our mission to provide our patients with comprehensive, compassionate care.