Pediatric Cough: Children Are Not Miniature Adults

Pediatric cough-related issues, like most other conditions in particularly young children, share similarities but also have substantial important differences with adults. These can be understood from physiologically based domains simplified to (1) cough-specific, (2) general respiratory, (3) other direct systems such as the immune system, and (4) other general physiology. Among other reasons, these result in observed differences in etiology, management, and measurement of response between children and adults. For example, while empirical therapy for chronic cough is widely advocated for adults, it is not advocated for children. Indeed, there is some evidence that an empirical approach is potentially harmful; this is related to the use of medications and the delay in obtaining a correct diagnosis such as missed foreign body aspiration.