Understanding medical terms in a hospital report...

[Cavair]

I have a hospital letter report from my consultant but there are terms which Im not fully sure what they mean even though I have tried looking on Google.

Along with all my health problems it says "Performance Status 1" and

FEV1 1.51 (53% predicted)....She told me that my lung capacity is only about 50% after years of chronic asthma (and ive never smoked!)...im age 65.

As i have to send in copies to DWP it would help to understand the above. Ive found some explanations of FEV, but not sure about the Performance, so am sort of presuming it means the lowest level of performance, but how many levels are there?!

Hoping there someone in the know out there!

Thanks

[Superzob]

Performance status 1 is the second lowest of 0-4, where 0 is normal and 1 means your performance is slightly affected by your symptoms. My FEV is similar to yours, and I'm a similar age and have never smoked. I'm wondering whether our lungs were not properly formed at an early age; there's a general range of early age lung function from 80-120% and, if you start at the 80% level, your FEV will be down to 60% at our age, due to normal wear and tear. I also have some asthma which brings it down to 50%, but I'm told that regular use of a preventer inhaler will stabilise this, though I guess the normal wear and tear will continue. Hope this is some help.