Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39362666›Full record

ArticleThe European respiratory journal2025

The McMaster Cough Severity Questionnaire (MCSQ): a cough severity instrument for patients with refractory chronic cough.

Elena Kum, Gordon H Guyatt, Rayid Abdulqawi, Peter Dicpinigaitis, Lieven Dupont, Stephen K Field, Cynthia L French, Peter G Gibson, Richard S Irwin, Faye Johnston and 7 more

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PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in The European respiratory journal, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
8citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

8 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
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  3. Review
  4. Review
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

17 authors.

Elena KumDepartment of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Gordon H GuyattDepartment of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Rayid AbdulqawiKing Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre and College of Medicine, Alfaisal University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Peter DicpinigaitisAlbert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, NY, USA.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5318-9060
Lieven DupontDepartment of Respiratory Diseases, University Hospital Leuven, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Stephen K FieldDepartment of Medicine, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
Cynthia L FrenchDivision of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, UMass Memorial Medical Center, Worcester, MA, USA.
Peter G GibsonPriority Research Centre for Asthma and Respiratory Diseases and Hunter Medical Research Institute, Faculty of Health and Medicine, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5865-489X
Richard S IrwinDivision of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, UMass Memorial Medical Center, Worcester, MA, USA.
Faye JohnstonChronic Cough Canada, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Lorcan McGarveyCentre for Experimental Medicine, School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2860-0302
Robert NewmanChronic Cough Canada, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Nada PopovicChronic Cough Canada, Hamilton, ON, Canada.
Jaclyn A SmithDivision of Infection, Immunity and Respiratory Medicine, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8837-4928
Woo-Jung SongDepartment of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4630-9922
Paul M O'ByrneDepartment of Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0979-281X
Imran SatiaDepartment of Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada satiai@mcmaster.ca.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4206-6000

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundCough severity represents an important end-point to assess the impact of therapies for patients with refractory chronic cough (RCC). Our objective was to develop a new patient-reported outcome measure addressing cough severity in patients with RCC.

methodsPhase 1 (item generation): a systematic survey, focus groups and expert consultation generated 51 items. Phase 2 (item reduction): from a list of 51 items, 100 patients identified those they had experienced in the previous year and rated their importance on a 5-point scale. The McMaster Cough Severity Questionnaire (MCSQ) included items reported to occur most frequently and that had the highest importance scores. Patient feedback on the MCSQ led to elimination of redundant items. Another 100 patients completed the MCSQ, from which we performed an exploratory factor analysis and a Rasch analysis to further refine items on the MCSQ.

resultsPrevious publications report on the details of Phase 1. Phase 2 led to selection of 15 items from the initial 51. Patient feedback on the 15 items led to elimination of five redundant items. An exploratory factor analysis of the 10-item MCSQ led to the selection of two domains, and the elimination of one item that demonstrated cross-loading and another that had high inter-item correlations. A Rasch analysis of the 8-item MCSQ confirmed that the response options functioned in a logically progressive manner and that no items exhibited differential item functioning. The final 8-item MCSQ has a 1-week recall period and includes two domains (intensity and frequency). The 8-item MCSQ had high internal consistency (Cronbach's α=0.89), proved able to distinguish different levels of cough severity (person separation index 0.89) and demonstrated high cross-sectional convergent validity (Pearson's correlation 0.76, 95% CI 0.66-0.83) with the 100-mm cough severity visual analogue scale.

conclusionsInitial evidence supports the validity of the MCSQ, an 8-item instrument measuring cough severity in patients with RCC. Future studies should evaluate its properties in measuring change over time.

Indexed as

CoughPatient Reported Outcome MeasuresAdultAgedChronic CoughChronic DiseaseFactor Analysis, StatisticalFemaleFocus GroupsHumansMaleMiddle AgedReproducibility of ResultsSeverity of Illness IndexSurveys and Questionnaires

Identifiers

PMID39362666
PMCPMC11799886

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY-NC
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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.