About this episode

This episode explores the historical roots and ongoing implications of race-based corrections in lung capacity testing.

The history of race-based correction of lung-capacity measures can be traced to a pre–Civil War belief among slave owners that slaves had naturally inferior lung capacity. Despite work to show that race-corrected spirometers mask lung-disease severity in Black patients, the majority of U.S. hospitals still use them. A full transcript of this episode is available at https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2601975.

Topics covered

• race-based medicine
• lung capacity
• health disparities
• spirometry
• historical context

Keywords

• lung testing
• race correction
• spirometers
• Black patients
• healthcare disparities

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: U.S. hospitals

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