Re: Lum S, Hoo AF, Hulskamp G, Wade A, Stocks J. Potential Misinterpretation of Infant Lung Function Unless Prospective Healthy Controls Are Studied. Pediatr Pulmonol 2010;45:906-913

摘要

To the Editor: We congratulate Lum et al. for their careful analysis of infant lung function measurements in a cohort of healthy British infants. They demonstrated that forced expiratory flow measurements obtained with the Jaeger Master-Screen BabyBody system differed significantly and systematically from those published by Jones et al., and were able to mathematically adjust for these differences. These authors conclude that "if infant lung function tests are to have any significant future role, a concerted effort from members of the ATS/ERS working group on infant and lung function tests to present the rationale and safety data to support recruitment of healthy infants for lung function tests, and discourage usage of such tests in the absence of adequate controls...". We respectfully suggest that this conclusion may not be supported by their study. Lum et al. demonstrated that data from healthy infants published by Jones et al. does not provide a similar normative range as those in their study using a different piece of equipment and different software. Although Lum et al. sought technical reasons for these differences, they were not able to be clearly elucidated.