Interventions for cough in cancer

Molassiotis, A., Bailey, C., Caress, A., Brunton, L. and Smith, J. (2010) Interventions for cough in cancer. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 11 (9). (doi:10.1002/14651858.CD007881.pub2). (PMID:20824870)

Abstract

Cough is a distressing symptom in patients with cancer and difficult to manage in practice. Hence, the aim of this review is to assess and synthesise the available literature in the management of cough in cancer patients, in order to improve on practice recommendations. Studies with chemotherapy or radiotherapy were excluded. An extensive literature search yielded 17 studies for evaluation. Eight of them were about the use of brachytherapy (a technique were a radiation source is placed inside the bronchus in the lung or next to the area requiring treatment), use of laser resection or photodynamic therapy (a treatment that uses a drug plus a special type of light to kill cancer cells). Nine more studies assessed the effects of a number of different medication, including codeine and morphine. Overall, the research was of poor quality with significant methodological problems, hence no credible evidence is available in the literature to guide practice. Acknowledging these limitations, brachytherapy was found to be helpful in a variety of radiation doses in selected patients. Also some pharmacological treatments were found to be helpful particularly with regards to morphine, codeine, dihydrocodeine, levodropropizine, sodium cromoglycate and butamirate citrate linctus (a cough syrup), although all studies had significant risk of bias and some reported side effects. No practice recommendations could be drawn from this review. There is an urgent need to increase the number and quality of studies evaluating the effects of interventions in the management of cough in cancer

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Contributors

Author: C. Bailey

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