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Monitoring of cough trends in COPD

2015 
Introduction: Cough is a symptom of respiratory diseases and continuous monitoring of cough may yield a useful marker for disease management, e.g. for verification of recovery after early discharge or early identification of an acute exacerbation of COPD (AECOPD). For chronic coughers, the trends (relative changes) in the objective cough count are considered to be the information carriers. Methods: Cough sound recording and analysis using two remote stationary sensors and a dedicated semi-automated cough classifier was undertaken in patient9s homes for 45 days after hospital discharge following an AECOPD. All counts were normalized with respect to the first day of monitoring and various time series analysis methods were explored. Patient records were inspected for clinically relevant events like hospital re-admittances, visits to GP, and medication changes. Results: Data were available for 12 subjects: 8 patients with a clinically relevant event during the monitoring period and 4 without. Graphs of the cough count showed day-to-day variations of a factor 2 and declining cough counts immediately after discharge for most of the patients. Furthermore, a patient-independent cough trend curve can be defined, where crossing this line separates the patients into two classes congruent with that on basis of the medical data. Conclusion: Though the patient cohort is very limited, the hypothesis that monitoring of cough count can be useful in disease management is confirmed. The data also suggest that the timing may be sufficient for meaningful intervention.
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