What’s wrong with an elevated DLCO?

Well, not necessarily anything, although as usual that depends on the circumstances. Recently I was contacted by an individual who was concerned that their DLCO had decreased from 120% of predicted to 99% of predicted. They also mentioned that their DLCO results have normally ranged from 117% to 140% of predicted over the last 9 months.

More interestingly however, they said that

“the technician told me before I even took the test that anything over 100% for DLCO is essentially a testing error.”

Wow. That statement is wrong on so many levels it’s hard to know where to start but I’ll give it a shot anyway.

First, there are a variety of DLCO reference equations. The ATS/ERS guidelines recommends that PFT Labs pick the reference values that most closely matches their patient population but how this is done is left to individual labs. There are at least a couple dozen DLCO reference equations to choose from and probably about a half dozen of these are in common use in PFT labs around the world.

Because no patient population is ever going to precisely match those of a study this means that DLCO results are going to tend to be above or below 100% of predicted depending on which reference equation the lab is actually using. This also means that if results from otherwise normal subjects are mostly above or mostly below 100% of predicted then the wrong reference equations are being used.

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