Spirometry in life-long non-smoking, healthy Chinese women in Taiwan

To establish the spirometric values for normal, healthy Chinese women in Taiwan, the spirometry of 506 life-long non-smoking, healthy Chinese women was examined, including 140 subjects over the age of 60 years. Significant correlations among age, height and forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1), FEV1/FVC%, peak expiratory flow (PEF), Vmax75, Vmax50, Vmax25 were found. However, there were no significant correlations between age and FEV1/FVC%, nor age and Vmax25 in the elderly group. FEV1 (FEV1*) and FVC (FVC*) were standardized to the overall mean height for elderly women using Cole's formula. The decline in FEV1* and FVC* with age were observed. The predicted value for the average 70-year-old woman with a height of 1.5 m derived from the present study is compared with those from other surveys of the elderly. The values from the present study are somewhat higher than the values from the Hong Kong study. The authors believe the fact that all of the present subjects were life-long non-smokers might explain the differences.