Emphysema and its relation to age.

To establish whether a correlation existed between emphysema and age, 24 lungs were used to measure the alveolar membrane fenestrations; the average area of 100 fenestrae was then plotted against age. Eighteen of these lungs were from patients 17 to 86 years of age with no history of respiratory ailments, whereas 6 lungs were from patients in whom an antemortem diagnosis of emphysema had been made. A significant, positive correlation between age and the area of fenestrae (t=2.