Childhood habit cough treated with consultation by telephone: a case report

A 5-year-old with cystic fibrosis was diagnosed with habit cough following evaluation by a pediatric pulmonologist and otolaryngologist. An expert in the treatment of habit cough provided instruction by telephone to the patient's mother regarding use of hypnotic techniques in this setting, which was associated with resolution of the cough within a week.As this report describes a single patient, it is possible that his improvement was unrelated to the given advice. Therefore, it remains to be seen whether therapy by telephone for habit cough is applicable widely.Childhood habit cough has been treated successfully by making suggestions that it can be stopped, desensitization techniques, use of distractors, provision of rewards, and self-hypnosis [1]. All of these published techniques have involved personal contact between a health care provider and a patient.This report presents a child with cystic fibrosis (CF) who was diagnosed with habit cough. After consultation by telephone with a pediatric pulmonologist, the cough improved rapidly following employment of suggested hypnotic techniques.The patient was an almost 5-year-old, diagnosed with CF following birth with meconium ileus. He was homozygous for the ΔF508 CF mutation. He developed pneumonia at 3 months, and by a year of age was found to harbor Pseudomonas aeruginosa in his airway. Since then he was treated with every-other-month tobramycin by inhalation (TOBI？), and daily Pulmozyme.Four months before he developed habit cough, the patient manifested severe coughing after contracting influenza. At that time, he was diagnosed with a second pneumonia, and treated with intravenous antibiotics. Two months later, computerized tomography revealed diffuse sinusitis, which was thought to be aggravating his pulmonary disease. Therefore, he underwent sinus surgery. A week after removal of the post-surgical nasal packing he developed a loud, harsh cough that occurred every other second for hours at a time, while awake. The