The FEV1/FVC ratio is used to estimate the presence and degree of airway obstruction. For well over thirty years my lab has used an FEV1/FVC ratio of 95% of predicted as the cutoff for normalcy. This value (carved onto a stone tablet by the way) had been brought to the lab by a founding physician who had come to the department from the NIH in the 1970’s. Since the software and hardware upgrade this summer our PFT Lab has switched to the NHANES III spirometry reference equations but we have so far resisted changing our 95% cutoff to the lower limit of normal (LLN). This is due in part to inertia but also in part to a mistrust in the concept of LLN. We have been steadily re-evaluating all of our testing criteria and have turned again to the FEV1/FVC ratio with the question as to whether our 95% cutoff is over-zealous or whether the LLN is too lax.
Strictly speaking LLN is a statistical concept. In the NHANES III study (and most others) it is computed as the mean predicted value minus 1.645 times the standard estimate of error. Unlike the reference equations for FVC and FEV1 which use both height and age as factors, the NHANES III reference equations for the FEV1/FVC ratio are derived solely from age. It is not clear to me this is completely correct and I have discussed some of the discrepancies between the NHANES III predicted FEV1/FVC ratio and height in a prior posting but it does make analyzing the LLN for the ratio easy. For adult, Caucasian males the reference equations are:
