Forced Vital Capacity (FVC) measures how much air someone can forcefully exhale after taking a deep breath. It is an important indicator of lung health and is measured during spirometry. Athletes and larger people tend to have higher FVC readings, while those with conditions like COPD and asthma have lower readings. Low FVC readings may indicate a problem with the lungs and further testing may be needed.
Forced Vital Capacity (FVC) is a measure of how much air someone can forcefully expel from their lungs after taking a breath to fill the lungs as full as possible. A value in liters of air is typically used to express FVC. This measurement is an important indicator of lung health. In people such as conditions with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma, the forced vital capacity is usually lower than expected for people of a similar gender, height, fitness level, and weight.
During pulmonary function testing, known as spirometry, FVC is one of the things that will be measured. The patient is asked to take a deep breath to fill the lungs as much as possible. This breath need not be fast or forceful. Once the lungs are full, the patient blows as hard and as fast as possible into a device that can measure the amount of air expelled from the patient.
Forced vital capacity is plotted on a graph typically showing a peak and a long descending tail. The peak represents the initial burst of air released from the lungs. As the patient’s lungs deflate, less air is expelled and as a result the amount of air released over time decreases. This creates the distinctive tail seen on an FVC graph.
This test is usually repeated several times to develop an average. Patients may have trouble adjusting to the equipment and this can result in a skewed baseline. As patients get used to the equipment and process, the values will be more accurate. Averaging allows the clinician to standardize the score on several measures to obtain a meaningful value.
Athletes usually have higher forced vital capacity because their lungs are more developed, especially if they have been playing sports and training for a long time. People such as swimmers, runners and motorcyclists can have significantly better lung health than other individuals. Larger people also tend to have higher readings because their lungs are larger. Graphs are available for comparing a patient’s results to people with a similar profile to determine if they are within normal range. If the readings on a forced vital capacity test are unusually low, it is an indicator that something is wrong with the patient’s lungs. Further tests may be needed to find out more about what is happening inside the patient’s body and why.
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