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Article Type

Original Study

Subject Area

Thoracic and Chest Diseases

Abstract

Introduction

Use of affordable and simple tools for screening chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is limited. In recent years, measurement of forced expiratory volume in the 6 s (FEV6) has been researched as a substitute to replace forced vital capacity measurements. This work was performed to analyze the effectiveness of a simplified handheld forced expiratory flowmeter device and to search an optimal cutoff value of FEV1/FEV6 to detect airflow narrowing and limitation.

Patients and methods

This was a cross-section study for screening and finding of active case among undiagnosed patients with COPD using a simple handheld spirometry device, and the results were compared with the results from conventional spirometry.

Result

A total of 164 participants were included in this study, and only 28.6% were discovered with limitation of airflow using traditional spirometry. FEV1, FEV6, and FEV1/FEV6 were determined using a handheld expiratory flowmeter. FEV1/FEV6 showed a strong correlation with FEV1/forced vital capacity, which was detected by traditional spirometry (r=0.741, P

Conclusion

Measurement of FEV6 and FEV1/FEV6 by simple handheld spirometry might be useful for early detection of airflow obstruction. Patients with abnormal results, detected using a cutoff value of FEV1/FEV6 of less than 0.73, should be transferred and subjected to additional traditional spirometry evaluations for confirmation of COPD.

Keywords

airflow limitation, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease screening, forced expiratory volume in the 1 s; forced expiratory volume in the 6 s

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

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