Abstract
Cough is one of the most common complaints for which patients seek medical attention. Misdiagnosis and mistreatment of cough exist commonly in China. The prevalence of acute cough caused by upper airway infection fluctuates between 9% and 64% in the community, for chronic cough, the prevalence >10% in most surveys, ranging from 7.2%-33%. The common causes of chronic cough are upper airway cough syndrome (previously called as post nasal drip syndrome [PNDS]), cough variant asthma (CVA), gastroesophageal reflux related cough (GERD) and eosinophilic bronchitis (EB). There is a regional discrepancy regarding the prevalence of common causes of cough and distribution of gender among China, UK, USA, the most common cause of chronic cough in China are CVA, followed by UACS, EB and atopic cough (AC), the male is almost equal to female in numbers in China. The risk factors for cough includes cold air, smoking, environmental pollutants, noxious substances and allergens, and unreasonable diet habits.
Highlights
Cough is the most common complaint in outpatient clinics
It has been estimated that 360 million dollars are spent on over-the-counter (OCT) medications for chronic cough in the US every year, and the total amount of money spent on the treatment of cough globally is enormous (> 10 billion dollars) [2]
No surveys on economic burden caused by chronic cough have been conducted in China, we postulate that the situation is not better than that in America
Summary
Cough is the most common complaint in outpatient clinics. Based on its duration, cough can be divided into three classifications: acute cough (8wk). The results of the latest multicenter survey in China shows the incidence of using antibiotics previously was 69% in patients with chronic cough [19]. Epidemiological surveys in the community show a high incidence of chronic bronchitis, the hospitalbased studies on the etiology of chronic cough have shown that the proportion of these patients is only 4%-7% [27,28] (Table 2). In infants of 1 to 4 months, and this eases after age of 1 year It is debatable whether GERD is a common cause of chronic cough in children. In China, Yang et al reported that chronic cough seriously interfered with the patient's quality of life, which shows no gender difference. A survey in Guangzhou showed that patients with an average duration of 4 years of cough are troubled with mental and social problems, one-half of patients feel embarrassed and annoyed, and greater than one-quarter feel upset and even depressed [86]
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