Faculty Collaboration Database

Area under the expiratory flow-volume curve: normative values in the National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES) study. J Investig Med 2022 Jun;70(5):1247-1257

Date

02/23/2022

Pubmed ID

35190486

Pubmed Central ID

PMC9240334

DOI

10.1136/jim-2021-002057

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-85133100654 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   1 Citation

Abstract

The area under the expiratory flow-volume (AEX-FV) loop has been evaluated before as a spirometric tool for assessing respiratory functional impairment. We computed the AEX-FV curves in spirometry tests performed on 20,313 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) study.We analyzed 108,939 spirometry tests performed between 2007 and 2012 (5964 children; 14,349 adults). In these tests, we computed the three areas from existing NHANES raw data on instantaneous expiratory flows measured at 0.01 s intervals.Mean best-trial measurements for AEX-FV were 3.4 in boys, 2.8 in girls, 11.8 in men and 7.7 L²/s in women. We characterized indices of central tendency and dispersion of the measurements (eg, means and fifth percentiles-lower limits of normal) by age group (children vs adults), gender, race or ethnicity group and effort grading. Simple regression equations using logarithmic transformations of the above areas and using age, gender and height as inputs provided good predictive ability for the variable AEX-FV.Regular, digital spirometry could and should make available to clinicians and researchers the area under the curves for flow versus volume graph, providing additional tools in our armamentarium to evaluate ventilatory impairments and patterns, and possibly respiratory disability.

Author List

Ioachimescu OC, McCarthy K, Stoller JK

Author

Octavian C. Ioachimescu MD, PhD Vice Chair, Director, Professor in the Medicine department at Medical College of Wisconsin

MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Adult
Child
Female
Forced Expiratory Volume
Humans
Male
Nutrition Surveys
Reference Values
Respiratory Tract Diseases
Spirometry