Six months follow up of cough-related health status in a large population of patients from the Isala cough clinic

Abstract

Introduction: Cough-specific quality-of-life tools can survey the severity of chronic cough. Reporting changes in cough related health status may serve as a proxy for success rate and provide useful information for patients, referring physicians and insurance companies. Aims and objectives: The primary objective of the study was to determine changes in cough related health status 6 months after first visit to the largest cough clinic in the Netherlands. Another objective was to study the frequencies of certain diagnoses. Methods: A retrospective cohort analysis was performed of the patients who have visited the cough clinic of the Isala hospital between 2009 and 2013. General patients characteristics, the results of the investigations, the diagnosis and the outcome of health status as measured by the Leicester Cough Questionnaire (LCQ) at visit 1 and after 6 months were extracted from our database. Results: Overall, 78.5% of 631 patients from the database (66% female, mean age 58 years) demonstrated an improvement in health status after 6 months. 66.7% of patients had an increase in LCQ scores that exceeded the Minimal Clinically Important Difference (MCID) of 1.3 points. 40% of patients had at least 2 causes for the cough. Asthma, gastroesophageal reflux and rhinitis were most common in causing the cough. Conclusion: The majority of patients with chronic cough showed an improvement in health status 6 months after the first visit to our cough clinic, Two thirds of patients even reported an improvement in LCQ scores exceeding the MCID. In many patients more than one cause for the cough has been demonstrated.