Influence of predicted FEV1 on bronchodilator response in asthmatic patients.

Background: There is currently disagreement on the way of expressing the reversibility of airflow obstruction, with some evaluations based on the initial FEV(1) while others use predicted FEV(1) (according to age, gender and height).

Objectives: To test the relevance of expressing bronchodilator response as a percentage of predicted FEV(1), we evaluated the influence of morphological data on the response to bronchodilators in a population with a large range of predicted values.

Methods: We measured the change in FEV(1) after inhalation of 200 microg of salbutamol in 30 asthmatic subjects (15 adults and 15 children) in whom predicted FEV(1) ranged between 1.