![]() Fever, cough and/or shortness of breath are common symptoms with frequency and severity of cough differing between individuals and changing over the time course of the disease. Īcute pneumonia is an infection of the pulmonary interstitium and the alveoli. While various biomarkers are currently used on asthma control, further investigations are needed on the impact of nocturnal cough and wheeze. The Task Force of the European Respiratory Society on asthma monitoring concludes that different types and stages of asthma require different types of monitoring schemes. ![]() Thus, nocturnal wheeze, if detected early, should initiate appropriate therapy. Especially during COVID 19 pandemic uncontrolled asthma is an important risk factor for severe COVID-19 disease. Consequently, negative effects of those undetected and hence untreated symptoms on the patients’ quality of life may occur. Even asthmatic patients, who describe themselves as symptom-free may show wheeze if monitored objectively. In previous studies it has been shown that up to a third of children with asthma are suffering from nocturnal wheeze, with great improvement once a sufficient therapy has been established. Hence, important information on the patient’s history is missing and only assessed by self-reporting or caregiver ‘s subjective perception. There are numerous reasons for cough and wheezing at night in children, and irrespective of the underlying diagnosis, symptoms are usually not objectively recorded. Furthermore, different treatment approaches in children with wheezing may show benefit, if initiated early. While for nocturnal cough both under- and overreporting has been noticed, truly little is known about the true incidence of wheezing or coughing during the night. Smoking parents tend to underestimate their offspring’s respiratory symptoms. Often, the parents’ perception of the frequency of their children’s cough is not accurate. Getting reliable information from patient or parents on nocturnal symptoms like cough or wheeze is challenging. Respiratory symptoms, such as coughing, are among the most common reasons being presented in pediatric primary care. Further studies to assess possible diagnostic and therapeutic benefits of this device are needed. We obtained additional information on nighttime symptoms, which would otherwise have remained obscure. To our knowledge this is the first study using a new device to assess nocturnal cough and obstructive breath sounds objectively in children with a wide variety of respiratory diseases. Nocturnal cough readings but not wheeze readings correlated with some of the corresponding scores. ![]() Accuracy of the automated measurement was higher for cough than for wheezing sounds. Time for audio-validation of recordings took between 2 and 40 min (mean: 14.22 min, (SD): 10.72). Resultsįorty-nine recordings of thirty-nine children were processed (asthma n = 13 cystic fibrosis n = 2 pneumonia n = 5 suspicion of habit cough n = 7 prolonged, recurrent or chronic cough n = 13), and cough and asthma scores were compared to the objective nocturnal recordings. The aim of our study was to analyze the use of an automated detection system to assess breath sounds objectively in comparison to cough and wheeze questionnaires and to evaluate its feasibility in clinical practice. Nocturnal cough and wheeze are important symptoms when diagnosing any respiratory disease in a child, but objective measurements of these symptoms are not performed. ![]()
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