53
Research Trials
20
Peer-reviewed publications
16
Clinical Conditions
At CHEST 2025, held in Chicago, Illinois, Laurie Slovarp, PhD, CCC-SLP, professor at the University of Montana and certified speech pathologist, presented a poster on the development of a digital therapeutic designed to improve access to behavioral cough suppression therapy for patients with refractory chronic cough.
A large-scale trial examining the effect of azithromycin on the relationship between oesophageal function and cough as evaluated by Hyfe's cough monitoring technology in respiratory disease is feasible and acceptable to patients.
This study used Hyfe's wearable cough monitor during a 7-day run in, 28-day treatment, and 14-day follow-up period in patients with chronic bronchitis.
Periods of intense coughing (termed bouts, epochs or bursts) are particularly problematic for some coughers and may not be reflected by simply counting the number of coughs per day. This study explored how varying the definition of bouts yield different impressions of cough severity.
Rationale
Periods of intense coughing (termed bouts, epochs or bursts) are particularly problematic for some coughers and may not be reflected by simply counting the number of coughs per day. The most widely used definition of a bout is arbitrarily defined as 2 or more coughs separated by less than 2 seconds and is poorly correlated with patient reported outcomes. Continuous cough monitoring enables a more rigorous analysis of this phenomena. This study explored how varying the definition of bouts yield different impressions of cough severity.
Two weeks of continuous cough data from two chronic coughers were analyzed to explore how different definitions of cough bouts (inter-cough intervals and minimum number of successive coughs) impact the resulting cough pattern. Bout definitions were varied using inter-cough intervals of 2, 4, and 6 seconds, and minimum successive cough counts of 2 and 6. Daily cough counts, longest bout in seconds, number of bouts per day were examined for each inter-cough interval.
We observed that Participant 1 coughs far more than Participant 2 on a daily basis (Panel A) - mean coughs per day (1,420 vs 691 - dashed lines). One might conclude that coughing is a more serious problem for Participant 1. However, Participant 2 has longer cough bouts (2 successive coughs per bout) than Participant 1 (Panel B). Participants 1 and 2 have inconsistent ranking when bouts are defined by minimum number of coughs (2 or 6 successive coughs per bout) - Panel C. Longer inter-cough intervals inflate the number of bouts across definitions.
There is a pressing need to understand the impact of cough bouts on a patient’s experience. Continuous cough monitoring provides a new opportunity to rigorously study cough bouts. Using cough monitoring data, we demonstrated that different definitions give profoundly different impressions of cough severity in these two iconic coughers. The prevalence of this observation in a population of coughers needs to be explored. If this is common, additional studies are needed to determine which definitions best correlate with what patients find most troubling about their cough (such as incontinence).
Take-home points:
