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In this Journal feature, information about a real patient is presented in stages (boldface type) to an expert clinician, who responds to the information, sharing his or her reasoning with the reader (regular type). The authors' commentary follows.
A 36-year-old pregnant woman at 21 weeks of gestation presented with a 4-week history of a dry, nonproductive cough.
Acute onset of cough in the patient's age group is most commonly due to a respiratory tract infection, typically viral. However, in the absence of other clinical findings suggesting an infectious cause, the most common causes of cough are postnasal drip (also called
Commentary
Source Information
From the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston (W.W.Y.); the Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan Medical School — both in Ann Arbor (S.S.); and the American College of Physicians, Philadelphia (S.E.W.).
Address reprint requests to Dr. Yeh at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Division of Infectious Diseases, PBB-4, 75 Francis St., Boston, MA 02115, or at wyeh@partners.org.
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