Abstract

Setting:

Coughing is the most common symptom encountered in the respiratory system diseases. But, there have been no data on coughing symptom prevalence in the Turkish population.

Objective:

The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of coughing symptoms in the adult population in Trabzon.

Design:

A questionnaire was applied to 1,544 subjects by door to door survey method. They were between 18 and 94 years old. The sample group was randomly selected from the current list of city inhabitants recorded in health centers, coughing with a duration of at least 3 weeks was defined as chronic.

Results:

The average ages were 33,61 ± 13,80 years (mean ± SE) in the male group and 31,96 + 13,36 in the female group.The point prevalence of acute and chronic coughing were 25.25%, and 12.88%; whereas the periodic prevalence of acute and chronic coughing from February 1997 to February 1998 were 36.92% and 12.44% respectively. There was no significant difference between the male and female populations except for the periodic prevalence of acute coughing which was 30.34% for men and 45.40% for women (p<0.0000001). In smokers, the prevalences were higher than non-smokers except for the periodic prevalence of acute coughing.

Conclusion:

Acute coughing was not able to be compared with the other studies, because of unavailability of such studies reporting prevalence. But, chronic coughing prevalence was similar to previous reports