Muhammad Rauful Hassan, Naveed Sharif, Muhammad Iqbal Khan, Sami Ahmed, Imran Bashir, Umaira Ch.
Relationship between FEV1 and PEF in patients with obstructive lung diseases.
Ann Pak Inst Med Sci Jan ;7(3):150-5.

Objective: The objective of the study was to assess the relationship between Force Expiratory Volume in one second (FEV1) and peak Expiratory Flow (PEF) in patients with obstructive lung diseases & their interchange ability when they are expressed as the percentage of their predicted value. Study Design: It was a cross sectional study Place and Duration: The Study was conducted in Department of Pulmonology at Bahawal Victoria Hospital, Quaid-e-Azam Medical College Bahawalpur, from 18th of March to 18th 2010 to September 2010. Materials and Methods: Initially the history taking, examination & Pulmonary Function Testes (PFTs) of 300 suspected patients of obstructive lung disease were performed. FEV1 & PEF was calculated on an electronic portable Spirometry. 120 diagnosed cases of Bronchial Asthma and COPD and new cases diagnosed on the basis of History, Examination, X-ray chest and Obstructive pattern on pulmonary function test by two senior consultants of the department were taken. Sample was taken by convenience sampling technique whose record of spirometry with best of three attempts was taken and data was then processed. Others were excluded on the bases of not giving history properly and inability to perform the test correctly. To see the relationship between FEV1 & PEF, H0 and H1 were stated. To evaluate the relationship Pearson correlation coefficient was applied & data was compiled using SPSS version 16. Results:Out of 120 patients, 74 (62%) were male and 46 (38%) were female. Among 120 patients 26 (21.6%) were between 15 to 35 years of age, 51 (42.6%) were between 36 to 55 years of age and 43 (35.8%) were above 55 years of age. It was seen that among 120 patients only 30(25%) patients were having well controlled symptoms at the time of presentation where as 90(75%) patients were having poorly controlled disease. The relationship between FEV1 and PEF was studied by applying Pearson Correlation Coefficient, which comes to be 0.798. The t-test applied comes to be 14.3 at 95% confidence level, which is >1.98 (df=118) table value. Hence it was found that FEV1 and PEF are not changeable. Conclusion: In our study we concluded that FEV1 & PEF were poorly related in patients of obstructive Lung diseases and neither of them can be predicted from the other.

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