For the curious:
Here is a photo of the handheld percussion device the poster refers too. It vibrates at a high frequency by way of compressed air moving through the device. It can be used over the patient chest and back muscles similar to the machine used to wax and buff a car for the family vacation. Even in the hospital setting it is likely considered time-consuming and cumbersome.

Congrats on doing deeper research for additional treatments to help your condition. There are several videos on YouTube describing methods of hand-percussion and chest stimulation. This can often help more sedentary patients keep from "drowning" in excess mucus. The rythmic beats will cause the Cillia hairs in the respiratory system to keep moving the mucus up and out.
As to the medicines you found, our Docs are probably limited in prescribing any medicines which have not yet proven effective for the degree of our ailments. But armed with data, she may be willing to write a script not normally used. They may have to fight for you to get Big Insurance to agree with us also. Wishing you All the best.

People who have a lot of mucus and find getting it up and out very difficult are sometimes prescribed a percussion vest. They are generally very expensive and only prescribed when someone has tried all the other avenues and not been successful. Sometimes they work very well for people and other times it's not a successful treatment. There are many other things to try before the vest would be considered.

As for the questions about meds, here's a link to the article at the NIH: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5723211/

We're finding that many of the lung diseases that were thought to be separately thought to be identifiably different do have some similarities and this particular one is specific to COPD patients who still smoke and who have lots of mucus. It's not recommended for non-smokers.

Fascinating. Are they any good at all??

@KarenLankfordS This is fascinating. If you get any more info please let us know. Of course you would-- silly me. I'm going sign off for now before I stick the other foot in!!! Have a good evening and breathe ez