Journal of Clinical Medicine
Between-Session Reliability and Agreement of Body-Plethysmographic Lung Volumes in a Legacy Pulmonary Function Cohort
By Carmine Izzo, Alessandro Izzo, Pasquale Mone and 3 others.
Abstract
Background
Serial interpretation of lung volumes requires assessing both reliability and agreement. We examined these properties in a historical clinical dataset.
Methods
This retrospective secondary analysis included 72 participants, excluding seven same-session pre/post-bronchodilator pairs. The primary analysis used 19 separately dated pairs labelled pre-bronchodilator at both examinations; the expanded 65-pair analysis was exploratory. Documented intervals were two to three days; the investigator retrospectively confirmed separate-day examinations within six days for all 65 pairs. Total lung capacity (TLC) and residual volume (RV) were principal outcomes; functional residual capacity was secondary and available in the same 19 participants. Analyses included two-way mixed-effects, absolute-agreement, single-measure intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs), Lin’s concordance correlation coefficient, Gaussian reference limits, empirical difference quantiles, and leave-one-out analyses.