Description of nighttime cough epochs in patients with stable COPD GOLD II–IV

Patrick Fischer,¹ Volker Gross,¹ Johannes Kroenig,² Andreas Weissflog,³ Olaf Hildebrandt,² Keywan Sohrabi,^1,4 Ulrich Koehler<sup>2

1</sup>Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Applied Sciences, Giessen, Germany; ²Department of Pneumology, Intensive Care and Sleep Medicine, University Hospital of Marburg and Giessen, Marburg, Germany; ³Clinical Research Department, Thora Tech GmbH, Giessen, Germany; ⁴Institute for Medical Informatics, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Giessen, Germany

Purpose: Chronic cough is one of the main symptoms of COPD. Ambulatory objective monitoring provides novel insights into the determinants and characteristics of nighttime cough in COPD.
Materials and methods: Nighttime cough was monitored objectively by LEOSound lung sound monitor in patients with stable COPD II–IV. In 30 patients, with 10 patients in each stage group, nighttime cough was analyzed for epoch frequency, epoch severity (epoch length and coughs per epoch), and pattern (productive or nonproductive).
Results: Cough was found in all patients ranging from 1 to 294 events over the recording period. In 29 patients, cough epochs were monitored, ranging from 1 to 75 epochs. The highest amount of cough epochs was found in patients with COPD stage III. Active smokers had significantly more productive cough epochs (61%) than nonsmokers (24%).
Conclusion: We found a high rate of nighttime cough epochs in patients with COPD, especially in those in stage III. Productive cough was predominantly found in patients with persistent smoking. LEOSound lung sound monitor offers a practical and valuable opportunity to evaluate cough objectively.

Keywords: cough, COPD, nighttime, cough-monitor, lung sound, cough epochs