Aims of the study: Routinely collected health data are increasingly used for research, however important history items may be incomplete in medical records. We assessed clinical documentation of exercise-induced respiratory symptoms (EIS) by treating physicians and compared with parent-reported EIS for the same children. Methods: We analysed data from the Swiss Paediatric Airway Cohort (SPAC), a multicentre observational study of children treated in Swiss outpatient pulmonology clinics. We included children 6 to 17 years of age who were referred to a paediatric pulmonologist for evaluation of EIS. Features of EIS recorded by physicians were extracted from outpatient clinical letters transmitted to the referring physician, while parent-reported EIS data were collected from a standardized questionnaire completed at SPAC enrolment. We calculated agreement between physician-documented and parent-reported EIS characteristics using Cohens and Fleisss kappa. Results: Of 1669 children participating in SPAC (2017-2019), 193 (12%) met the inclusion criteria, of whom 48% were girls. Physicians provided detailed information on EIS in 186 (96%) outpatient clinical letters. Documented characteristics included: type of physical activity triggering EIS (69%), localisation of EIS in chest or throat (48%), respiratory phase of EIS (45%), and timing of EIS during or after exercise (37%). Previous bronchodilator use (94%) and its effect on EIS (88%) were consistently documented by physicians. The clinical letters of children diagnosed with dysfunctional breathing more often contained detailed EIS characteristics than for children diagnosed with asthma. The agreement between physician-documented and parent-reported EIS was moderate for use of bronchodilators (k=0.53) and poor to fair for all other features (k=0.01-0.36). Conclusion: This study highlights that outpatient clinical letters may lack some details on EIS characteristics, information which parents could provide. A standardized and detailed method for documenting paediatric respiratory symptoms in the coordinated data infrastructure may enhance future analyses of routinely collected health data.

Dr Singer reports financial support from Novartis Pharma, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and non-financial support from Chiesi Pharmaceuticals, Amgen Inc. outside the submitted work. All other authors declare that they have no competing interests.

This work was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF 32003B_162820, 320030B_192804, 320030_212519), the Swiss Personalized Health Network (DEM-2022-17), and the Swiss Lung Association (2019-02 641670).

I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained.

Yes

The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:

The SPAC study is approved by the Bern Cantonal Ethics Committee (Kantonale Ethikkomission Bern 2016-02176).

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I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).

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I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable.

Yes

All data produced in the present study are available upon reasonable request to the authors