[Cough during the middle of the night--an early symptom of bronchial asthma?].

With regard to a differentiated therapy it is necessary to demarcate the clinical picture of the bronchial asthma early from the other chronic (obstructive) pulmonary diseases. Despite subtle anamnestic statement, careful clinical examination and simple functional tests of the lung in individual cases a clear diagnostic coordination and differential-diagnostic demarcation, respectively, cannot be performed. Before the use of further proceeding bronchologic and allergologic investigation techniques the questioning after nocturnal attacks of hacking cough is recommended which in our own clinical material could be proved in the phase of manifestation in 139 of 162 patients with bronchial asthma.