[Quality improvement in workers health surveillance: the spirometry training courses experience]

The spirometry execution during workers health surveillance requires accurate and reproducible spirometric measurements, which should comply with the ATS/ERS guidelines. Low acceptability of spirometric manoeuvres has been reported in health surveillance. This may hamper the validity of the results and affect clinical decision making. Training and refresher courses may produce and maintain good-quality testing, promote the use of spirometric results in clinical practice and enhance the quality of interpretation. We evaluated (with PLATINO score) 239 spirometries from 23 occupational physicians recorded before and after a spirometry refresher course (16 hours) and we verified that only 4 physicians showed a very good improvement and others 4 a good improvement of score, while 9 showed a very slight improvement and 6 instead no improvement. It is worthy of note that in 2012 some spirometers not suitable to UNI EN 26782/2009 were still in use.