The 2023 American Thoracic Society (ATS) document on race and ethnicity in pulmonary function test interpretation advocating "race-neutral prediction equations" [1], and the subsequent editorial on the same subject, in a recent issue of the European Respiratory Journal [2], are timely, in spite of some disagreement. For many years, pulmonary function laboratories have (alternatively, they may have chosen not to) reduced the predictions (based on age, height and sex) for lung volumes and capacities (but not for the transfer factor, T_LCO) by 10–15% for patients of African or Asian ancestry. In my book on pulmonary function, published 13 years ago [3], I said (p. 262) "... a practical solution would be to ‘note’ the ethnic origin in the pulmonary function report, rather than correct the lung volumes by an arbitrary figure".

2023 年美国胸科学会 (ATS) 关于肺功能测试解释中的种族和民族的文件提倡“种族中性预测方程”[1]，以及最近一期《欧洲呼吸杂志》中关于同一主题的后续社论[2 ]，尽管存在一些分歧，但还是及时的。多年来，肺功能实验室（或者他们可能选择不）将肺容量和容量（但不包括转移因子T _LCO）的预测（基于年龄、身高和性别）降低了 10-15非洲或亚洲血统患者的百分比。在我 13 年前出版的关于肺功能的书中 [3]，我说（第 262 页）“……一个实用的解决方案是在肺功能报告中‘注明’种族血统，而不是纠正肺容量由任意数字”。