Measuring voluntary and reflexive cough strength in healthy individuals

Cough reflex testing is a validated tool for identifying patients at risk of silent aspiration. However, inter- and intra-rater reliabilities of perceptual judgements of cough strength are sub-optimal. Although there are clinically established methods for measuring volitional cough strength, no simi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Respiratory medicine 2017-11, Vol.132, p.95-101
Main Authors: Mills, Claire, Jones, Richard, Huckabee, Maggie-Lee
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic
Acoustics
Air flow
Airflow
Citric acid
Cough
Cough strength
Identification methods
Measurement methods
Patients
Pressure
Reflexive cough
Respiratory diseases
Strength
Voluntary cough
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Summary:Cough reflex testing is a validated tool for identifying patients at risk of silent aspiration. However, inter- and intra-rater reliabilities of perceptual judgements of cough strength are sub-optimal. Although there are clinically established methods for measuring volitional cough strength, no similar methods are identified for reflexive cough strength. This study evaluated three measurement methods of voluntary and suppressed reflexive cough strength. Fifty-three healthy subjects (≥50 years) participated in this study. Participants produced ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ voluntary coughs and suppressed reflexive coughs to incremental doses of citric acid. Peak and area under the curve (AUC) measurements were taken of pressure, airflow, and acoustics. There was no dose effect of citric acid on measures of reflexive cough strength. Strong voluntary coughs were stronger than reflexive coughs for all measures (p 
ISSN:0954-6111
1532-3064
DOI:10.1016/j.rmed.2017.09.013