Cough Frequency in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Acute exacerbations of COPD remain a common cause of morbidity and are associated with a sustained increase in the respiratory symptoms of dyspnoea, cough, sputum volume and sputum purulence. Cough is one of the most commonly reported and key symptoms in COPD patients. Cough can also be a useful factor in finding patients at risk of progressive airflow obstruction and cough along with the breathlessness is the major cause of distress in patients with chronic obstructive airways disease (COPD). There is limited literature looking into cough and COPD especially objective assessments. in clinical practice and in most clinical trials scoring systems ie quality of life questionnaires or visual analogue scores, have been used to measure COPD exacerbation severity, although these may give an indication of the perceived severity of the symptom, they are inherently subjective and may be influenced by other factors. Shortfalls have prompted the development of cough recorders as an objective measure of this symptom. With this in mind we propose recruit 30 subjects with non-infective exacerbations of COPD and monitor their cough frequency as an inpatient in acute exacerbation and for 45 days post hospital discharge in order to elucidate the natural history of cough during and after an exacerbation.