Longitudinal passive cough monitoring and its implications for detecting changes in clinical status

RESEARCH QUESTION: What is the impact of the duration of cough monitoring on its accuracy in detecting changes in the cough frequency? MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a statistical analysis of a prospective cohort study. Participants were recruited in the city of Pamplona (Northern Spain), and their cough frequency was passively monitored using smartphone-based acoustic artificial intelligence software. Differences in cough frequency were compared using a one-tailed Mann–Whitney U test and a randomisation routine to simulate 24-h monitoring. RESULTS: 616 participants were monitored for an aggregated duration of over 9 person-years and registered 62 325 coughs. This empiric analysis found that an individual's cough patterns are stochastic, following a binomial distribution. When compared to continuous monitoring, limiting observation to 24 h can lead to inaccurate estimates of change in cough frequency, particularly in persons with low or small changes in rate. INTERPRETATION: Detecting changes in an individual's rate of coughing is complicated by significant stochastic variability within and between days. Assessing change based solely on intermittent sampling, including 24-h, can be misleading. This is particularly problematic in detecting small changes in individuals who have a low rate and/or high variance in cough pattern.