Introduction: Chronic cough lasting for more than 8 weeks is a persistent symptom which acts on human’s daily activity and worsens the quality of life. The most common reasons for chronic cough are: asthma, gastroesophageal reflux (GER), upper airway cough syndrome (UACS), chronic bronchitis and chronic obturatory pulmonary disease (COPD). The diagnosis of chronic cough is not easy at all, very often prolonged in time and finally the right diagnosis could be missed. The aim of this study is to asses the causes of chronic cough in patients hospitalised in authors’ clinics.

Material and methods: The diagnostic algorithm was taken from guidelines of European Respiratory Society (ERS). There were 25 patients with chronic cough qualified for the study. The duration of the leading symptom was from half
a year to many years. All of the patients have already undergone some of the diagnostic procedures but no diagnosis was put or it had to be verified.

Results: None of them had any abnormal findings in physical exmination as well as in lungs radiograph, gasometry and ECG. They had normal values for D-dimers and basic spirometry. Those investigations allowed to exclude the reasons of chronic cough like chronic heart failure, COPD, pulmonary embolism and neoplasms. In that group of patients GER was the most common reason of chronic cough. 30% patients with GER were also diagnosed with another disease like allergy, cough variant asthma or mycoplasmatic infection.

Conclusion: As a conclusion it is worth to say that GER is still to rarely taken under consideration as possible reason forchronic cough which prolonges in time the right diagnosis.