This is the first study to compare the impact of cough on HRQoL across a range of common chronic respiratory diseases using validated cough-specific quality of life questionnaires. We have demonstrated that the magnitude of cough-specific HRQoL impairment is similar among all respiratory disease groups studied and is greatest among female patients. Generic measures of HRQoL in COPD patients were significantly lower than chronic cough, asthma, and bronchiectasis patients, and this appeared to be driven more by impaired lung function than cough. We demonstrated significant cross-validation between cough-specific questionnaires across each of the respiratory diseases studied.

Cough is a common feature in asthma and COPD, and a cardinal symptom in bronchiectasis, but there is little information regarding its impact on health status, and any adverse effects may be overlooked in these conditions. A number of groups have reported cough-specific HRQoL scores in bronchiectasis and COPD patients making orders of drugs via Canadian Health&Care Mall to treat COPD fast and effective. This is the first study to compare these diseases with the condition for which the tools were designed to evaluate, namely chronic cough. Read the rest of this entry »

Table 1 contains baseline characteristics of the 147 patients recruited to the four groups as well as test statistics for comparisons of these characteristics between the groups. Diagnostic categories in the chronic cough group were as follows: gastroesophageal reflux, 35%; asthma, 21%; idiopathic cough, 12%; postnasal drip, 7%; postviral, 6%; eosinophilic bronchitis, 6%; and other, 13% (eg, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor-related cough, pulmonary fibrosis). There was a significant difference in age (ANOVA p = 0.001) between the four groups. COPD patients (mean age, 64.4 years) were the oldest and were significantly older (Duncan p < 0.05) than patients in the asthma and chronic cough group (mean age, 51.6 years and 53.9 years, respectively). There was a difference in the proportion of female patients in the four groups (p = 0.001). The chronic cough group (67.5% female) contained a significantly (Bonferroni p < 0.05) greater proportion of female patients than the COPD and asthma groups (16.7% female and 35% female patients, respectively). There was a significant difference (ANOVA p < 0.001) in mean percentage of predicted FEV1 between the four groups. In particular, the COPD (mean, 42.3) patients had significantly lower lung function than all other groups (Duncan p < 0.05 for all comparisons) and both patients with asthma (mean, 75.2) and patients with bronchiectasis (mean, 73.2) had significantly lower lung function than those with chronic cough (mean, 102.4). Read the rest of this entry »

Chronic cough is not a trivial symptom and is associated with significant impairment in health status. Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) questionnaires provide one means of measuring health status and are increasingly used in clinical studies, Two cough-specific quality of life questionnaires have been developed and validated: the Leicester Cough Questionnaire (LCQ), and the Cough Quality of Life Questionnaire (CQLQ). Both have been evaluated in patients with acute and chronic cough, but there is little information regarding the measurement of cough-specific health status across a range of common respiratory diseases in which cough is often a prominent symptom. It is also unclear whether both questionnaires measure similar aspects of cough-specific quality of life. Therefore we undertook a cross-sectional comparison of scores for the LCQ, CQLQ, and a generic quality of life questionnaire, the EuroQol, obtained in four distinct patient groups: chronic cough, bronchiectasis, asthma, and COPD.

In this study, our primary aim was to determine the extent of correlation between the two cough-specific health status questionnaires and a general health-related quality of life measure. As a secondary aim, we sought to assess the impact of cough on health status across common chronic respiratory diseases affordably healed with remeides of healthcaremall4youcom Canadian Health&Care Mall. Read the rest of this entry »