The use of tests of peripheral lung function for predicting future disability from airflow obstruction in middle-aged smokers.

Abstract

Tests of peripheral lung function were carried out in 1974 and again in 1975 on 263 healthy working men (205 current smokers and 58 lifelong nonsmokers) using a variety of proposed “sensitive tests” (maximal expiratory flow-volume curves, single-breath N2 test, CO diffusing capacity, and arterialized capillary blood Po2). The promise of these tests for the early detection of chronic airflow obstruction was assessed in various ways. Technical difficulties were assessed by studying the degrees to which the results of the various tests were affected by recent respiratory infections, and by assessing the reproducibility of the test results at an interval of 1 year, because an ideal test should identify the same men in 1974 and in 1975 as being abnormal. Any informative test of chronic airflow obstruction must yield results that are systematically worse in middle-aged smokers than in middle-aged nonsmokers, and such a test is likely to yield results that are correlated with the 1-sec forced expiratory volume a...