Hi can you tell me how to qure a prickly cough my father is 68 who has had a triple bypass couple of years ago and has prickly cough for nearly three months. He has described it like fine needles in his throat making him cough. He already takes an inhaler as it effects breathing, is any thing you can suggest???
Hi and thank you for your question. Your fathers cough is considered a chronic cough since it lasted for more than 8 weeks. The causes of chronic cough are many and to judge better about its because it would help me to know a bit more of his cough characteristics and his medication history. In the setting of heart disease my first concern is that the highest probability of its cause is related with heart insufficiency especially if the cough is nocturnal and the cough has pink frothy secretions. In this situation the treatments that for heart insufficiency and pulmonary edema. If your father is taking an antihypertensive medication that is part of a group called A C E inhibitor like enalapril, ramipril this also is a cause of chronic cough in a group of patients, and it may begin anytime between hours to months after the first dose. The solution is to stop this medicament. Does your father smoke or has smoked in the past ? He is taking an inhaler for his breathing problems so I can not exclude a chronic bronchitis and in this case if I was his treating doctor I would order a chest X-ray, pulmonary function test to decide for the treatment. I hope my opinion can be a help to you. Kind regards Chat Doctor. 