Abstract
Background Hospital admissions are important contributors to the overall burden of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Understanding the patterns and causes of hospital admissions will help to identify targets for preventive interventions. This study aimed to determine the five-year all-cause hospital admission trajectories of patients with COPD following their first-ever exacerbation-related hospitalization.
Methods Patients with COPD were identified from the Danish national registries. Patients experiencing their first-ever exacerbation-related hospitalization, defined as the index event, between 2000 and 2014 were included. All-cause hospital admissions were examined during a subsequent five-year follow-up period, and categorized using the International Classification of Diseases, 10th revision (ICD-10).
Results In total, 82 964 patients with COPD were included. The average age was 72 (sd 10) years and 48% was male. Comorbidities were present in 58%, and 65% of the patients collected inhalation medication ≤6 months prior to the index event. In total, 337 066 all-cause hospital admissions were identified, resulting in a five-year admission rate of 82%. Most admissions were due to non-respiratory causes (59%), amongst which cardiac events were most common (19%).
Conclusion Hospital admissions following a first exacerbation-related hospitalization are common, non-respiratory events constitute the majority of admissions. Besides the respiratory causes, treatment targeting the non-respiratory causes of hospital admission should be considered to effectively decrease the burden of hospitalization in COPD.
Footnotes
This manuscript has recently been accepted for publication in the ERJ Open Research. It is published here in its accepted form prior to copyediting and typesetting by our production team. After these production processes are complete and the authors have approved the resulting proofs, the article will move to the latest issue of the ERJOR online. Please open or download the PDF to view this article.
Conflict of interest: S.O. Simons has received grants and personal fees from AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline and Chiesi outside the submitted work. F.M.E. Franssen has received grants and personal fees from AstraZeneca, Chiesi, Boehringer Ingelheim, Glaxosmithkline, Novartis and MSD outside the submitted work. M.A. Spruit has received grants and personal fees from the Netherlands Lung Foundation, Stichting Asthma Bestrijding, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingeheim, TEVA and CHIESI outside the submitted work. C.T. Pedersen has received grants from Bayer and Novo Nordisk outside the submitted work.
All authors declare no conflicts of interest in relation to the present study.
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- Received May 4, 2022.
- Accepted June 29, 2022.
- Copyright ©The authors 2022
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