Pulmonary function in young females of Kolkata, India - Revisited

Rapid economic and industrial growths imposed significant impact on human health including the pulmonary health. Questions were raised regarding the validity of the existing prediction norms of pulmonary function tests (PFTs) in a particular population. The present study was conducted to investigate the applicability of the existing norms for PFTs in young healthy non-smoking female university students of Kolkata, India. Significant difference was noted in vital capacity (VC), forced vital capacity (FVC), and forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV₁) when the present data were compared with the earlier study in similar population. Correlation statistic revealed significant relationship of age and body height with all the PFT parameters. Body mass had significant correlation with VC, FVC, FEV₁ as a percentage of FVC (FEV_1%), and peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR). Regression equations have been computed for predicting PFTs from age and body height. There has been a change of PFTs in the studied population for the last couple of decades due to increased environmental pollution in the course of economical and industrial developments. Regression equations computed in this study are not only recommended to predict PFT parameters in the studied population, but they are also considered more reliable owing to their substantially smaller standard error of estimate than those proposed in the previous study.