The South African Guideline for Office Spirometry was recently published. Its aim was to provide an updated guideline for office spirometry in South Africa (SA), thereby improving the quality, standardisation and usefulness of spirometry. The need for local prediction equations based on large, all-inclusive studies of the SA population was highlighted in this guideline. It was suggested that the European Community for Steel and Coal (ECSC) prediction equations, derived from the study of Europeans, should be used as a norm, and that the use of a correction factor for adjusting predicted values that was sometimes applied in the past be discouraged.