Respiratory medicine
-
Respiratory medicine · Sep 1999
Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical TrialVolume calibration alone may be misleading.
The use of spirometry is becoming more and more widespread in non-laboratory situations such as general practice or occupational medicine. In these non-laboratory situations, volume calibration with a 3000 ml syringe is often the only feasible method to ensure that the spirometer produces valid and reproducible data. Sophisticated equipment to calibrate forced manoeuvres with standard waveforms are not present. ⋯ Volume calibration may be misleading. The results from volume calibration may meet the ATS criteria, but this is no guarantee that data from forced manoeuvres are accurate. If CDS equipment to simulate standard wave forms is not available, it is recommended that biological calibration is performed regularly and, if possible, that paired data from two (or more) different spirometers are compared.