Quality of spirometry test performance in children and adolescents - Experience in a large field study

Study objective: To determine the ability of children and adolescents to me et the American Thoracic Society (ATS) goals for spirometry quality that we re based on results from adults. Design: Observational. Participants: More than 4,000 public school students, ages 9 to 18 years. Measurments: Spirometry was performed annually for 3 years, with the record ing of maneuver quality measures of forced expiratory time, end-of-test vol ume, back-extrapolated volume, and time to peak expiratory flow (PEFT), and the recording of differences between best and second-best FVC, FEV1, and p eak expiratory flow (PEF) values. Results: Regression analyses showed significant influences of participant a ge, gender, ethnicity size, clinical status, and previous testing experienc e, as well as differences among individual test technicians. In general, th ese influences were small and explained little of the variance in performan ce. On average, children with a history of asthma or wheeze performed bette r quality spirometry than did others, Only PEFT improved significantly from year to year. Overall, only 15% of girls' tests and 32% of boys' tests met the PEFT criterion derived from adults in the Lung Health Study. Conclusion: Most of the children met adult-based ATS goals for spirometry t est performance. Age group-specific criteria are needed to ensure adequatel y fast PEFT and reproducible PEF values.