Editor's Choice December, 2017

Nicole Beydon

An Official American Thoracic Society Technical Statement entitled "Recommendations for a Standardized Pulmonary Function Report" has been published in the issue of December 2017 of the AJRCCM. With the aim of improving interpretation, communication and understanding of spirometry, lung volumes, and diffusing capacity measurements, a Task Force reviewed the literature and proposed Technical Standard on reporting pulmonary function test (PFT) results for manufacturers and PFT lab. As examples the Task Force recommends to display the columns of data in tabular in the following order: the actual value, the LLN or ULN, the z-score (optional), and the percent predicted value. For spirometry it is proposed to report only FEV1, FVC and their ratio with the expiratory time. For spirometry and CO diffusion, the use of reference values established throughout growth such as GLI-2012 and GLI-2017, respectively, is encouraged and a system of grading the quality of the test is dispayed.

Culver BH, Graham BL, Coates AL, et al. Recommendations for a Standardized Pulmonary Function Report. An Official American Thoracic Society Technical Statement. Am J Respir Crit Care Med Vol 196, Iss 11, pp 1463–1472"