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Pulmonary diffusing capacity in healthy African‐American and Caucasian children
Author(s) -
Kim YoungJee,
Christoph Kathy,
Yu Zhangsheng,
Eigen Howard,
Tepper Robert S.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
pediatric pulmonology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.866
H-Index - 106
eISSN - 1099-0496
pISSN - 8755-6863
DOI - 10.1002/ppul.23205
Subject(s) - dlco , medicine , diffusing capacity , pulmonary diffusing capacity , lung volumes , cardiology , lung , lung function
Summary Previous studies of pulmonary diffusing capacity in healthy children primarily focused upon Caucasian (C) subjects. Since lung volumes in African‐Americans (AA) are smaller than lung volumes in C subjects of the same height, diffusing capacity values in AA children might be interpreted as low or abnormal using currently available equations without adjusting for race. Healthy AA (N = 151) and C (N = 301) children between 5 and 18 years of age performed acceptable measurements of single breath pulmonary diffusing capacity for carbon monoxide (DL CO ) and alveolar volume (V A ) according to current ATS/ERS guidelines. The natural log of DL CO and V A were associated with height, gender, age, and race; AA children had lower DL CO and V A compared to C children. Adjustment of DL CO for Hemoglobin (Hgb) resulted in no significant difference in DL CO among these healthy subjects with normal Hgb. In summary, we report prediction equations for DL CO and V A that include adjustment for race (C; AA) demonstrating that AA have lower DL CO and V A compared to C children for the same height, gender, and age. Pediatr Pulmonol. 2016;51:84–88. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.