The validity and precision of the leicester cough questionnaire in COPD patients with chronic cough

Abstract

BackgroundA validated instrument to assess the effects of chronic cough on health status in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is currently not available. The Leicester Cough Questionnaire (LCQ) is a cough-specific health status questionnaire which is originally validated for a population of general patients presenting with chronic cough. We examined the psychometric performance of the LCQ in patients with COPD and chronic productive cough.MethodsConcurrent validity, internal consistency, reproducibility and responsiveness were determined. The St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) and the Short Form-36 (SF-36) were used as external criteria. Questionnaires were completed at the start of the study. After 2 and 12 weeks the LCQ was repeated, together with a global rating of change.ResultsIn total 54 patients were included. Concurrent validity analysis showed significant correlations between corresponding domains of the LCQ and the SGRQ (rs -0.31 to -0.60). Corresponding domains of the LCQ and the SF-36 showed weaker correlations (rs 0.04 to 0.41). Internal consistency was adequate for two of the three domains (Cronbach's α 0.74 - 0.86). Test-retest reliability in stable patients was high (intraclass correlation coefficients 0.79 - 0.93). The mean difference after two weeks was 0.73 (± 1.75). Responsiveness analysis indicated that the LCQ was able to detect changes after 12 weeks.ConclusionThe LCQ is a valid, reliable, responsive instrument to measure health status in COPD patients with chronic productive cough.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov: NCT01071161

Validation of the Polish Version of the Chronic Cough Quality of Life Questionnaire (Leicester Cough Questionnaire)

“…It has been validated in Dutch, Portuguese, Korean and Chinese [13,14,21,22]. Moreover, the validity of LCQ was also proved in patients with bronchiectasis or COPD [23,24]. There has been no cough-specific QOLQ in Polish so far.…”

How best to measure cough clinically

“…The Leicester Cough Questionnaire (LCQ) is a nineteenitem questionnaire that comprises of three health domains; physical, psychological and social [13]. It has been evaluated in patients with chronic and acute cough, post-infectious subacute cough, bronchiectasis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) [10 , 14,15,16,17 ]. The LCQ has been well validated.…”

Validation of the French version of the Leicester Cough Questionnaire in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

“…This bias is lower than the bias measured for total score of LCQ in its validation in COPD patients. 7 The Bland and Altman method 23 is an adequate method to observe absolute measurement errors between two repetitive tests. 19 Both instruments were administered again after 2 weeks, considering that this period is long enough to prevent the patients from remembering the previous test but as short enough to avoid changes in health status.…”

“…6 It explores the impact of cough severity across physical, psychological and social domains and focuses specifically on cough contrarily to the other questionnaires that encompass multiple respiratory symptoms. Its Dutch version was validated in COPD patients, 7 and its potential use was explored in different conditions in this population. [8][9][10] Unfortunately, no specific questionnaire exists in French to evaluate cough as a single symptom.…”