spirometry results help to understand them!

hiya

my asthma has been fairly awful all year with a hell of a lot more time in hospital than out of hospital!

I had some spirometry tests done at the beginning of my admission but was too poorly to ask for results. I know the ones in the middle of my admission were better but not sure what they mean.

My normal peak flow is quite high at 550 but i used to be a keen swimmer and play the clarinet! My spirometry results showed a fev1 of 0.6 and an fvc of 1.4 what does this mean as im a little bit confused!

Any help very much appreciated guys thanks lv kat Xxx

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FEV1 is a measurement of how much air you can get out of your lungs in 1 second and the FVC is the total volume of air that you can get out of your lungs after a maximal inspiration.

Basically the results give you an indication of how wide your airways are and another commonly quoted figure is FEV1/FVC which gives an indication as to wether there is any airflow obstruction with anything below 70 being considered obstructed.

Hope that makes sense! If not let me know and i'll try explain it again!

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so mine would be 43% which is less than 70% so thats why they would have kept me in so long then. I was told at the time i had a large area of consolidation is this likely to have affected the result or is it just airways obstruction that it monitors?? Thanks for your help its made things a little clearer though im still a bit puzzled about the test as a whole as some people say that when asymptomatic you can have normal spirometry results but mine always vary between whatever it was when i was poorly 43% and no higher than 69%. Is this really bad or is it ok that im never technically 'normal' even when generally okish?? Thanks kitkat Xxx

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I'm not sure what consolidation indicates but if it was infection then yes this could affect your results. Trying not to confuse matters but spirometry can also be used to help identify the presence of restrictive lung disease.

Even when asymptomatic there is a possibility that some remodiling if the airways has occured which could lead to your lower than average result.

any more questions let me know and I will try to answer them!

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thanks otter! Im due some more spirometry again soon so will see how that is in comparison. Thank you for your very helpful information i understand a lot more about the results now and what they indicate! Hope your well! Take care lv kat Xxxx