Pulmonary diffusing capacity and dyspnoea following COVID-19: Insights from multicentre datasets

Pulmonary complications remain a significant challenge for COVID-19 survivors, necessitating advanced diagnostic approaches for long-term assessment. We present a curated, open-access dataset of pulmonary function measurements—including nitric oxide (DLNO) and carbon monoxide (DLCO) diffusing capacities—in 572 post–COVID-19 patients and 72 healthy controls (filtered from an original cohort of 726 survivors and 126 controls). Collected across eight international centres, the data include demographics, spirometry, lung volumes, and 5–6 s single-breath DLNO5s, DLCO5s, and alveolar volume (VA5s). Missing values for total lung capacity were imputed, and low-quality or system-specific (Hyp'Air Compact) measurements were excluded in the filtered dataset. A third subset (333 patients, 54 controls) links these measurements to dyspnoea severity (mMRC scale) for correlation and proportional odds analyses. This resource underpins predictive modeling of post–COVID pulmonary impairment via summed z-scores (DLNO + DLCO) and aims to accelerate validation of NO-CO diagnostics. The freely accessible datasets are provided in both SPSS (.sav) and .csv formats at the Mendeley Data Cloud-based repository and includes nominal, ordinal, and scalar data.