Chest
Differences in Acoustic and Dynamic Characteristics of Spontaneous Cough in Pulmonary Diseases
Section snippets
Patients
We studied 31 patients with spontaneous cough, seven of whom had asthma, five of whom had acute bronchitis, seven of whom had chronic bronchitis, five of whom had TBCS and seven of whom had FPD. Their mean age (±SD) was 53 ± 11 years (range, 24 to 68 years). Twenty-four were women. Anthropometric and pulmonary function data of the patients grouped according to diagnosis are presented in Table 1.9 None of the patients was taking any antitussives or medicine, which could induce cough, but some
Results
An average of 12.4 ± 6.2 (mean ± SD) coughs (range, 4 to 27) were recorded from each patient. Typically, a cough reflex comprised deep inspiration followed by glottic closure, glottic opening and rapid expiratory flow (CPEF) (Fig 2). However, one cough could include several opening and closing phases without intermittent inspirations. The sounds always occurred simultaneously with the CPEF phases. The numeric data from phonopneumographic measurements are presented in Table 2 and those from the
Discussion
The groups for the present study were selected with the purpose of studying patients with different pathophysiologic basis of cough: asthma with variable bronchial obstruction, bronchitis with expectoration or infection or both, TBCS with pathologic bronchial dynamics, and FPD with reorganization of the pulmonary tissue. Since the patients were breathing through a mouthpiece, we recorded the cough sounds at the sternal manubrium. With the microphone on the cheek, the mouthpiece and noseclip
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to thank Professor Markku Rahiala, D.Pol.Sc., from the Department of Statistical Sciences, Helsinki University, for his help in the statistical analyses; Mr. Reijo Aulanko, M.Sc., from the Department of Phonetics, Helsinki University, for advising sound spectral analyses; and Mr. Hannu Seitsonen, Civil Engineer, from Helsinki University Central Hospital, for guidance in solving technical problems.
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Radiology
Cited by (0)
This study was supported by the Finnish Association Against Tuberculosis (Dr. Piirilä) and the Sigrid Juselius Foundation (Dr. Sovijärvi).
Manuscript received July 11; revision accepted November 3.