An Observational Study Using Novel Questionnaire to Characterize Cough Phenotypes in Patients With Chronic Cough

Cough has previously been described by the type of cough you have ie such as wet, dry, and chesty, and also by its features such as how often you are coughing its,intensity, and severity, but never has the varying patterns of cough been studied in any detail and it could be that the pattern of the cough is closely related to patient-perceived intensity, frequency and most importantly severity. Cough is a symptom and like any other symptom (such as pain) the severity of it can only be gauged by the patient experiencing it. We have created a one-page brand newl questionnaire that shows 4 distinct cough patterns that we believe exist and an empty field designed so that patients can record a pattern of cough they experience which is not already a choice on the questionnaire. The questionnaire also records patients' experience of how frequent, and intense, the cough is, and how it disrupts their lives, on a 1-10 scale (Visual analogue scale), the sum of these scores is collated and this gives us a severity score. The first phase of the project is to determine whether 30 Chronic cough patients understand the questionnaire, and are able to complete it with little direction, and if the cough patterns we identified encompassed all pattern types. second part of the study is to look at how repeatable the questionnaire is when completed over a 6 week period.