PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Michael Crooks AU - Yvette Hayman AU - Caroline Wright AU - Alyn Morice TI - The utility of remote cough monitoring in COPD DP - 2013 Sep 01 TA - European Respiratory Journal PG - P4902 VI - 42 IP - Suppl 57 4099 - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/42/Suppl_57/P4902.short 4100 - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/42/Suppl_57/P4902.full SO - Eur Respir J2013 Sep 01; 42 AB - Background: Telehealth has been advocated as a way to monitor patients with COPD to anticipate exacerbations and allow early therapeutic intervention. We have investigated whether automatic cough counting over a 45 day period following an acute exacerbation can be used as an objective measure of wellbeing and compared this with home FEV1 measurement.Method: The Hull Automated Cough Counter (HACC) was used to measure the cough frequency over a 24 hour period on days 1, 5, 20 and 45 post discharge following hospital admission with an acute exacerbation of COPD. Participants also performed home FEV1 monitoring and completed the Leicester Cough Questionnaire (LCQ), COPD Assessment Test (CAT) and Hull Airways Reflux Questionnaire (HARQ). Correlation between objective measures (cough count and FEV1) and subjective measures (LCQ, CAT and HARQ) was assessed.Results: All three subjective measures demonstrated improvement in quality of life in the 45 days following the acute exacerbation. There was no significant difference in sensitivity between each of the measures. Only cough counting was significantly correlated (p<0.001) with the subjective measures.Conclusion: Cough counting provides useful information for monitoring patients during and after a COPD exacerbation. The two objective measures appear to be quantifying different aspects of morbidity with cough counting being better than home FEV1 monitoring at reflecting patient wellbeing. As cough counting is a non-invasive and unintrusive assessment tool it is less liable to patient compliance issues and may be a valuable adjunct to monitoring COPD patients by telehealth.