A study carried out in Spain on 50 patients suffering from Charcot’s disease (n=26), autoimmune myasthenia (n=9) or genetic myopathy (n=15) shows that sound analysis of coughing, via a smartphone application developed by the Hiroshima Institute of Engineering (Japan) :
- reliably assesses the peak cough flow (PCF) measured with a flowmeter associated with an oronasal mask, even in cases of orofacial muscle weakness,
- detects patients with a PEF below 270 L/min, the threshold for cough assistance, with a sensitivity of 94.4% and a specificity of 100%,
- tends to underestimate PEF when it exceeds 400 L/min, probably for technical reasons such as the excessive distance between the smartphone microphone and the patient.
Larger-scale studies with different patient populations would confirm these results and the value of this technique for remote monitoring of at-risk neuromuscular patients.
