Loading...
Infants with unexplained chronic cough are often evaluated for gastroesophageal reflux (GER). Investigators used an ambulatory cough meter augmented with 24-hour pHmetry to record coughs in 20 children (age range, 3 months to 14 years) who presented to a single pediatric gastroenterology clinic in Australia with chronic cough and suspected GER. A total of 5628 cough episodes were analyzed (mean number of coughs per child, 159). The main outcome was cough within 10, 30, 60, and 120 seconds before or after a reflux episode (pH <4 for ≥0.5 seconds).
Most coughs (84%) were unrelated to acid reflux within 120 seconds, either before or after cough. Among the coughs associated with GER, the frequencies of cough followed by reflux and of reflux foll…