Definition of the cough
Cough is a sudden and most of the time repetitively occurring reflex of the human body. It is actually occur for clearing the breathing passage from the foreign particles and microbes. The reflex we talked about consist of three phases actually,
a) Inhalation: In which we take the air inside the lungs.
b) Forced Exhalation
c) Release of air: This will make a distinct sound as the air is forced from the lungs.
Normally prolonged cough indicates the disease like allergy cough. It is also beneficial for the bacteria’s for spreading the diseases. The most common cause is the respiratory tract infection; also the other causes can be smoking, pollution, asthma, post nasal drip etc;
Classification of the cough:
Cough I normally classified on the following characteristics;
1) Duration: It is further classified as follows;
a) Acute: Cough remains less than three weeks.
b) Sub Acute: Cough remains between three to eight weeks.
c) Chronic: Cough remains longer than three weeks.
2) Character: This is classified in
a) Dry cough: a dry cough is very irritating.
b) Productive cough: It includes the liquid septum.
3) Timing: It further classifies the cough by the occurrence as day, night or both.
Cough Diagnosis:
Following are the cough diagnosis;
a) Reactive airways disease: The asthma in which coughing is the only symptom it is called as cough variant asthma. Two such conditions are atopic cough and eosinophlic bronchitis. Atopic cough occurs in the family history and the eosinophlic bronchitis is characterized by the eosinophilia in the septum.
b) Infection: Cough can be caused by many infections due to bacteria and common cold. Common cold cough goes without treatment also but may remain after the cure also for some days.
Cough is not a very serious disease but needs to be treated early and properly. You just need to be careful with it.
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