GOLD criteria overestimate airflow limitation in one-third of cases in the general Finnish population

The Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) diagnostic criteria for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) use a fixed threshold of forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV(1))/forced vital capacity (FVC) ratio (<0.70) in post-bronchodilation spirometry to indicate disease, which has been shown to underestimate and overestimate disease prevalence in younger and older adults, respectively, whilst criteria based on reference values have better accuracy. Differences in reference values have limited their use in international studies. However, the new Global Lung Function Initiative reference values (GLI2012) showed FEV(1)/FVC to be the least dependent on ethnicity. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of airflow limitation with GLI2012 and the degree of underdetection or overestimation related to the use of GOLD in the general population. A Finnish population sample of 1323 subjects (45% male) with post-bronchodilation spirometry was studied. 80 subjects (6.0%) and 55 subjects (4.2%) were identified with airflow limitation with GOLD and GLI2012 criteria, respectively. The proportion of overestimation with GOLD increased with age from 25% of cases in 50-year-olds to 54% in 70-year-olds. Using z-score-based grading resulted in more dispersion in severity grading. In conclusion, the GOLD criteria cause a marked overestimation already from 50-year-olds and should be replaced with the GLI2012 criteria to improve diagnostic accuracy.