Journal of aerosol medicine : the official journal of the International Society for Aerosols in Medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
Respiratory-related quality of life: relation to pulmonary function, functional exercise capacity, and sputum biophysical properties.
One of the difficulties in assessing mucoactive therapy is selecting clinical outcome variables that reflect the impact of clearing airway secretions on quality of life (QOL). Petty and colleagues developed a questionnaire designed to evaluate the clinical impact of mucoactive therapy in patients with chronic bronchitis (CB). We evaluated this questionnaire in a multicenter study of a mucolytic medication used in patients with CB and hypothesized that spirometry, exercise capacity, and sputum clearability changes would correlate with QOL changes. ⋯ A change in forced expiratory volume in 1 second and forced vital capacity did correlate with a change in QOL. There is a need for a good QOL tool to evaluate mucus clearance devices or medications. The Petty questionnaire was designed specifically for this task, but the effect on sputum properties by current mucoactive agents may be too small to elicit a significant change in the Petty score.