ABSTRACT
It is important to evaluate lung function in preschoolers. There are few studies related to pulmonary function tests with this part of the population. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the success rate and test-retest reproducibility of the cough peak flow (CPF) in a sample with children between four and six years old. The CPF was tested in 44 healthy children (26 boys, 18 girls), selected according to the ATS-DLD-78-C questionnaire, used to detect the presence of common respiratory diseases or induced by environmental exposure. An expiratory peak flow meter (Piko-I Electronic Peak Flow Meter, Pulmonary Data Services, USA) was used to measure CPF. The success rate was defined as the percentage of children able to perform the test according to the acceptability and reproducibility criteria. To evaluate the test-retest reproducibility, 10 children (according with the sample calculation) were reevaluated after three weeks. The study was approved by the Ethics Research Committee of the Institution. The test-retest reproducibility was evaluated by the paired t-test, considering a significance of p<0.05 and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). The results showed a success rate of 91% for CPF, with 80%, 88% and 100% for children with four, five and six years, respectively. Regarding the test-retest reproducibility, there was no significant difference between data of the first assessment and reassessment (p=0.39) and an ICC of 0.84 was observed. These results suggest an elevated success rate in the performance of CPF and an excellent test-retest reproducibility for this variable in healthy preschoolers.
Keywords:
Respiratory Function Tests; Child, Preschool; Reproducibility of Results; Cough
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