The natural history of acute cough in pre-school children in primary care
Abstract
This thesis, of the natural history of acute cough in pre-school children, reports two studies: a systematic review and a prospective cohort study. The systematic review includes data synthesised from eight randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of antibiotics. The patients included in these RCTs appear to be an unrepresentative, selected population. The studies in the review also used different measures and definitions of cough duration, making it difficult to estimate the usual duration of the illness. Therefore, the cohort study determines the prognostic implications of the symptom cough in terms of cough duration, reconsultations and complications in an unselected cohort of pre-school children presenting to primary care. Aims of the thesis: 1. To describe cough duration in terms of the different proportion of children recovering through time. 2. To compare parent and clinician expectation of cough duration with actual cough duration. 3. To identify the clinical factors associated with prolonged cough. 4. To describe reconstruction and antibiotic prescribing rates ad the factors associated with reconstructions. 5. To document the complication rate and derive a clinical prediction rule for complications. 6. To examine the inter-observer agreement between an unstandardised and standardised clinical assessment. Chapter 2 is divided into two parts. First, the general literature review I describe the physiology, aetiology, classification and epidemiology of cough, I review the…
How strong is the evidence?
Evidence Hub reads this as a randomized trial, done in people. Its evidence level is 2 of 5 (High · randomized trial). Randomized trials of a reasonable size are the strongest single-study design.
Read the paper
Related studies
- Impact of antibiotics on the human microbiome and consequences for host health
- Antibiotics in the clinical pipeline in October 2019
- The incidence of collagen-associated adverse events in pediatric population with the use of fluoroquinolones: a nationwide cohort study in Taiwan
- Research Communications of the 32nd ECVIM-CA Online Congress
- Singlet-Oxygen Therapy. Scientific And Methodological Materials
- Artificial Intelligence in Pharmacovigilance
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.