Talk:Spirometer

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Vfang3. Peer reviewers: Lpoisson14.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 10:01, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Nataliereid. Peer reviewers: Walinde, Keiradams, Vbagchi.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 10:01, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Spirometer designs
There are at least three technical methods for designing a spirometer. Pneumotahometer is only one of the three. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.232.249.251 (talk) 10:41, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

AME
Some parts of the article seem a bit like AME ad to me... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.102.230.244 (talk) 20:05, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Race correction
I was wondering why the history of the spirometer does not include examples of the use of this device. Examples of this could include the use of the spirometer to measure lung capacity in slaves, as well as the use of spirometry in concluding that racial differences exist between whites and people of color. Lundy Braun’s "Breathing Race into the Machine" may be a good resource to address the role that the spirometer has played in medical stereotyping. Furthermore, I noticed that the descriptions of the spirometer for the present day do not address the use of race correction (a mathematical constant programmed into the machines) in the spirometer programs used by most physicians. The fact that race correction exists for spirometry should be addressed, especially considering that its implementation is a part of the history of this device. Even the manual of use for a NIOSH Spirometry training guide lists noting the race or ethnicity of the person tested as step four of a normal spirometry reading.

Additionally, the validity of medical conclusions made based on spirometry experiments throughout history are not assessed. For example, Hutchinson coined the term “vital capacity, which was claimed as a powerful prognosis for heart disease by Framingham study. He believed that his machine should be used as an actuarial predictions for companies selling life insurances.” There are implications to saying this, and it would be pertinent to know if actuarial predictions really did use vital capacity as a measure of risk. Given the conclusion from other studies that people of color had a lower vital capacity than whites, this could have implications on their access to affordable insurance policies. Another conclusion made in experiments referenced in this article includes the variables that influence vital capacity. Wintrich’s results indicated three variables: body height, weight, and age, yet even the Wikipedia for vital capacity sites five variables: age, sex, height, mass, and ethnicity. It seems worth noting when and how sex and ethnicity were determined to factor into vital capacity. Lkelly03 (talk) 16:09, 5 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Lkelly03, welcome to Wikipedia and thanks for your concerns about this page. I have to admit that this page is severely inadequate and requires major work up. You can start editing this page by adding the materials that you think is important. I already put this page on my watchlist and you are welcome to leave a message on my talk page when you encounter any problems when editing this page. Cheers. Cerevisae (talk) 01:26, 6 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi there, I'm part of the course 140.106, and I'm planning to address some of these concerns - in particular adding information about race correction. Please let me know any suggestions as I make edits! Vfang3 (talk) 05:57, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Some edits today (23 March 2017)
I noticed that this article read a little funny, so I wanted to clean it up a bit. As I was working on it, I found more and more that was a little bit off (from a common way of expressing things in English.) Then, I found that this actually appears to be a copy-and-paste of URL: https://pediaview.com/openpedia/Spirometer I didn't check this carefully, but I think that's the source.

I'm not really familiar with the topic; I just wanted it to read better. Can someone else review???

-- Sorry! That was a bit circular; the URL I mentioned says that it comes from this Wikipedia article.

Jkgree (talk) 20:21, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Peer Review
Hey Victoria! First off, great job expanding this article. I think the section you added really improves the article because it focuses on aspects of the spirometer's history that weren't included in other sections. Some minor nitpicks to improve your article would be being consistent in your use of single quotation marks vs double quotation marks. In addition, I think your last paragraph could be expanded a bit. What exactly qualifies a person as 'Black' or 'Asian' in a modern context? Where did those particular percentages come from? Is there research to suggest that this is an example of institutionalized racism? Or is it something like where you'd check for Sickle-cell in an African patient but arthritis in a European one? Again, great job! Lpoisson14 (talk) 14:42, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

In the Implications section, I think that the article goes on tangents about racial issues that, while interesting and important, do not appear to be directly related to the Spirometer as currently written. For example, the discussion on Thomas Jefferson's racial theories only mentions a biological "pulmonary apparatus" but does not directly connect the spirometer to the theory. Moreover, the introductory sentence The spirometer popularized notions of 'race corrections' and 'ethnic adjustments,' which suggested that black individuals have weaker lungs than white individuals. does not include a source, and so I am uncertain about the alleged connection between the spirometer and Jefferson's theories. For your reference, I also made some syntax edits to clarify the writing and make it more direct. Keiradams (talk) 00:03, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

First of all, I think you did a great job adding information regarding the historical implications of the spirometer, focusing on inventions to investigate the racial biases that exist today. The main thing I would change about your article is probably the placement of your section. While it does fall under history, I feel like either creating a new heading for "Racial Implications" or something along those lines would help delineate the section much clearer. Furthermore, your paragraphs are not entirely related to the direct apparatus of the spirometer so having an entirely separate section discussing racial implications would bring the page together a lot better. Vbagchi (talk) 22:30, 6 May 2017 (UTC)