How to deal with chronic cough in ILD

Chronic cough is a major symptom in interstitial lung diseases (ILD), especially as the fibrotic process progresses. No matter what the ILD diagnosis is, dry debilitating cough can go alongside breathlessness and really impact our patients’ quality of life. In this episode I try to give a few suggestions as to how we might be able to deal with this symptom.

It is very important to highlight that cough can be multifactorial, even in the context of ILD. Our patients may be having gastroesophageal reflux, postnasal drip, cough variant asthma, some form of allergy or occupational/environmental exposure. Cough may also have a psychogenic component that also needs to be addressed. Going over all these frequent causes of cough and providing advice or treatment as appropriate can sometimes help improve our patient’s cough.

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