Abstract
Cough peak flow (CPF) is a measurement for evaluating the risk of cough dysfunction and can be measured using various devices, such as spirometers. However, complex device setup and the face mask required to be firmly attached to the mouth impose burdens on both patients and their caregivers. Therefore, this study develops a novel cough strength evaluation method using cough sounds. This paper presents an exponential model to estimate CPF from the cough peak sound pressure level (CPSL). We investigated the relationship between cough sounds and cough flows and the effects of a measurement condition of cough sound, microphone type and participant’s height and gender on CPF estimation accuracy. The results confirmed that the proposed model estimated CPF with a high accuracy. The absolute error between CPFs and estimated CPFs were significantly lower when the microphone distance from the participant’s mouth was within 30 cm than when the distance exceeded 30 cm. Analysis of the model parameters showed that the estimation accuracy was not affected by participant’s height or gender. These results indicate that the proposed model has the potential to improve the feasibility of measuring and assessing CPF.
Highlights
Cough peak flow (CPF) is a measurement commonly used to evaluate the cough strength, which reflects the ability to expel airway secretions [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] and can predict the extubation [7,8] and reintubation outcomes [9,10,11]
To improve estimation accuracy, microphones should be installed on the body so that the microphones can maintain a constant distance from the sound source
This paper has proposed a nonlinear model for predicting the cough strength in young Japanese youth via cough sounds
Summary
Cough peak flow (CPF) is a measurement commonly used to evaluate the cough strength, which reflects the ability to expel airway secretions [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] and can predict the extubation [7,8] and reintubation outcomes [9,10,11]. CPF was measured with various devices, such as flow meters, spirometers and pneumotachographs. We propose a novel simple evaluation system for evaluating cough ability using cough sounds without the use of the facemask or the filter. If the assessment of the cough ability by cough sounds is feasible, it can be applied to patients in whom obtaining cough peak flow measurements using the current method is difficult. This study tested the hypothesis that cough sounds are associated with cough flow and we propose a cough flow prediction model using cough sounds based on our previous work [23]. Experiments were performed to determine the optimal cough sound measurement method and to investigate the influence of microphone type and participant height and gender on the accuracy of the estimated CPF via cough sounds (CPS) in young healthy participants. The effectiveness of the proposed model was verified by comparison with polynomial functions
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