Detecting chronic obstructive pulmonary disease using peak flow rate: cross sectional survey
BMJ 2003; 327 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.327.7416.653 (Published 18 September 2003) Cite this as: BMJ 2003;327:653
- Hannah Jackson, medical student1,
- Richard Hubbard, senior lecturer in clinical epidemiology (Richard.hubbard@nottingham.ac.uk)1
- Division of Epidemiology and Public Health, Nottingham City Hospital, Nottingham NG5 1PB
- Correspondence to: R Hubbard
- Accepted 3 July 2003
Introduction
The British Thoracic Society recommends spirometry, not peak expiratory flow, for diagnosing patients as having chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.1 Recording data from spirometry in patients' notes has been proposed as a marker of quality of care.2 But general practitioners are more familiar with peak expiratory flow rate, and have questioned using more complex spirometry tests to identify chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.3 We analysed data from the third national health and nutrition survey (NHANES III) to investigate how useful peak expiratory flow rate is for detecting people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in the community.
Participants, methods, and results
We included only white people aged 50-90 years because chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is uncommon in younger people, and we had insufficient statistical power to study other ethnic groups. We excluded people with self reported asthma.
For the remaining 3874 participants, we extracted information on lung function, history of smoking, …