The BSS - A Valid Clinical Instrument to Measure the Severity of Acute Bronchitis

For various reasons, standardized psychometric clinical measures of the severity of acute bronchitis (AB) are needed. They help to communicate more exactly on the degree of symptoms and the syndrome, respectively, and they contribute to objective assessment of clinical courses. In the clinic, it is not only necessary to measure outcomes of treatment regarding the intervention process, it is also essential to measure the extent to which the patients feel the treatment has influenced their condition and quality of life [1]. In this context, patient related rather than surrogate clinical outcome measures are valid, which should be based on both physicians and patient assessment. As will be shown subsequently, the psychometric clinical measures in the field of chronic lung diseases are more disseminated and more developed than those for AB, also referred to as acute respiratory tract infection RTI [2]. Measuring the severity of AB at a high psychometric level, however, seems to be overdue because this clinical syndrome, with cough being its strongest The BSS A Valid Clinical Instrument to Measure the Severity of Acute Bronchitis