Reliability and Validity of a Korean Version of the Leicester Cough Questionnaire

Purpose

There are no specific tools for measurement of the severity of chronic cough in Korea. We developed a Korean version of the Leicester Cough Questionnaire (LCQ) and tested its scaling and clinical properties.

Methods

The LCQ was adapted for Korean conditions following a forward-backward translation procedure. All patients referred to chronic cough clinics at 5 university hospitals between May 2011 and October 2013 completed 2 questionnaires, the LCQ and the Short-Form 36 (SF-36), upon presentation and completed the LCQ and the Global Rating of Change (GRC) upon follow-up visits after 2 or 4 weeks. Concurrent validation, internal consistency, repeatability, and responsiveness were determined.

Results

For the concurrent validation, the correlation coefficients (n=202 patients) between the LCQ and SF-36 varied between 0.42 and 0.58. The internal consistency of the LCQ (n=207) was high for each of the domains with a Cronbach''s alpha coefficient of 0.82-0.94. The repeatability of the LCQ in patients with no change in cough (n=23) was high, with intra-class correlation coefficients of 0.66-0.81. Patients who reported an improvement in cough (n=30) on follow-up visits demonstrated significant improvement in each of the domains of the LCQ.

Conclusions

The Korean version of the LCQ is a valid and reliable questionnaire for measurement of the severity of cough in patients with chronic cough.     

Predominance of KPC-3 in a Survey for Carbapenemase-Producing Enterobacteriaceae in Portugal

Among the 2,105 Enterobacteriaceae tested in a survey done in Portugal, 165 were nonsusceptible to carbapenems, from which 35 (26 Klebsiella pneumoniae, 3 Escherichia coli, 2 Enterobacter aerogenes, and 3 Enterobacter cloacae isolates and 1 Klebsiella oxytoca isolate) were confirmed to be carbapenemase producers by the presence of 30 Tn4401d-bla_KPC-3, 4 intI3-bla_GES-5, and one intI1-bla_VIM-2 gene, alone or in combination with other bla genes. The dissemination of bla_KPC-3 gene carried by an IncF plasmid suggests lateral gene transfer as a major mechanism of dissemination.