The patients’ perspective of chronic refractory cough

Understanding chronic refractory cough (CRC) from the patient’s viewpoint has several advantages:

  • Aids health care providers to help the patient feel more supported
  • Aids healthcare providers in recognizing the signs and symptoms sooner and appropriate referrals can be made sooner

There is limited information on the condition from the patient’s perspective.
A study was conducted to assess the features of CRC from the patients’ perspective.

Method

Patients
01

Patients

Diagnosed with CRC (n=20)
Procedure:
02

Procedure:

Semi structured interviews were conducted, recorded, and transcribed

Study findings

  • Onset of cough was reported by 19/20 participants; average total cough duration was 52 months.
  • Inciting events of cough was reported by 14/20 participants; cold, upper respiratory infection (URI), pneumonia, and sinus infection were the most common inciting events.
  • A total of 4 dominant themes, viz. cough triggers, physical symptoms, medical care, and quality of life were found.

Cough triggers

Vocalization, allergies, specific time of day or year, dryness, smells, exertion, and random triggers

Physical symptoms

Tickle in the throat, coughing fits, constant cough, dry cough, and uncontrollable cough exhaustion, voice changes, difficulty breathing

Medical care

Inhaler was the most common treatment; multiple treatment was prescribed in 87% patients; in 47% of the patients, cough frequency was reduced but not eliminated

Quality of life

55% of them described their coughs as “annoying,” whereas 35% of them reported frustration with their coughing. The most mentioned quality-of-life factors were social, including negative effect on social life (75%), criticizing comments from others (55%), feeling self-conscious about their cough (50%), sleep deprivation (40%), and everyday life interruptions (40%).

Understanding the patients’ perspective of chronic refractory cough can help the physicians understand the physical and emotional toll of the condition on the patients. Physicians can counsel patients appropriately to ease them of their apprehensions about their condition.

Reference: Wright ML, Fujiki RB, Lunga T, et al. Patient-reported qualitative analysis of chronic refractory cough. Am J Speech Lang Pathol. 2022:1–7.