Dr. Irwin Quotations

If a patient doesn't have any nose symptoms and he or she is coughing, then you should not be thinking they have the common cold.

There is no clinical evidence that overthe-counter cough expectorants or suppressants actually relieve cough. There is considerable evidence that older type antihistamines help to reduce cough, so, unless there are contraindications to using these medicines, why not take something that has been proven to work?

Some of the products contain medications that have no chance of working at all.

(We) found very little evidence for the efficacy of these over-the-counter cough preparations for cough due to the common cold.

Cough is very common in children. However, cough and cold medicines are not useful in children and can actually be harmful. In most cases, a cough that is unrelated to chronic lung conditions, environmental influences, or other specific factors, will resolve on its own.

The best studies that we have to date would suggest there's not a lot of justification for using these medications because they haven't been shown to work.