ArticleFamily practice2013
Can patients or clinicians predict the severity or duration of an acute upper respiratory infection?
Article in Family practice, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effect of aNutrients · 2019Trial
- Association of interleukin-8 and neutrophils with nasal symptom severity during acute respiratory infection.Journal of medical virology · 2015Trial
- Association between oral health and upper respiratory tract infection among children.International dental journal · 2018Article
- Serum IFN-γ-induced protein 10 (IP-10) as a biomarker for severity of acute respiratory infection in healthy adults.Journal of clinical virology : the official publication of the Pan American Society for Clinical Virology · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
purposeAcute upper respiratory infections (URI) are the second most common diagnosis in primary care offices. As treatments have limited effectiveness, patient counseling regarding expectations for the course of the URI is an important aspect of care. It is unknown how accurate patients, clinicians or questionnaires such as the Wisconsin Upper Respiratory Symptom Survey (WURSS) instrument are at predicting URI severity and duration, and whether these predictions should be used to counsel patients.
methodsSeven hundred and nineteen individuals with recent onset cold in community clinic settings participated. Participants and clinicians predicted the severity and duration of the URI and participants completed the WURSS instrument at initial visit. Subsequent URI global severity was calculated as area under the curve using an average of twice-daily WURSS-21 self-reports as the y-axis and illness duration as the x-axis. URI duration was determined by self-report of beginning and end of illness. Linear regression analysis was used to correlate baseline predictions with subsequent outcomes. Analyses by gender, age and income were also performed.
resultsThere was no significant association between participant and clinician predictions of severity or duration. Initial WURSS values explained 0.119 (95% CI: 0.074-0.163) of the variance in subsequent severity outcomes. There were no significant differences in associations by age, gender or income.
conclusionsClinicians should not use their predictive assessments or their patients' predictions when advising patients on the expected course of a URI. This study also suggests that the WURSS instrument could give some predictive information, but whether this is clinically useful is uncertain.
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Registered trials
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