Real-life burden of hospitalisations due to COPD exacerbations in Spain

José Luis Izquierdo; José Miguel Rodríguez; Carlos Almonacid; María Benavent; Ramón Arroyo-Espliguero; Alvar Agustí

doi:10.1183/23120541.00141-2022

Real-life burden of hospitalisations due to COPD exacerbations in Spain

ERJ Open Res. 2022 Aug 15;8(3):00141-2022. doi: 10.1183/23120541.00141-2022. eCollection 2022 Jul.

Authors

José Luis Izquierdo^{1

2}, José Miguel Rodríguez^{1

3}, Carlos Almonacid⁴, María Benavent⁵, Ramón Arroyo-Espliguero⁶, Alvar Agustí⁷

Affiliations

¹ Dept of Medicine and Medical Specialties, University of Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Spain.
² Respiratory Medicine, University Hospital of Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Spain.
³ Respiratory Medicine, University Hospital Príncipe de Asturias, Alcalá de Henares, Spain.
⁴ Respiratory Medicine, University Hospital of Toledo, Toledo, Spain.
⁵ SAVANA, Madrid, Spain.
⁶ Cardiology Medicine, University Hospital, Guadalajara, Spain.
⁷ Respiratory Institute, Hospital Clinic, University of Barcelona, IDIBAPS, CIBERES, Barcelona, Spain.

Abstract

Background: Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) often suffer episodes of exacerbation of symptoms (ECOPD) that may eventually require hospitalisation due to several, often overlapping, causes. We aimed to analyse the characteristics of patients hospitalised because of ECOPD in a real-life setting using a "big data" approach.

Methods: The study population included all patients over 40 years old with a diagnosis of COPD (n=69 359; prevalence 3.72%) registered from 1 January 2011 to 1 March 2020 in the database of the public healthcare service (SESCAM) of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain) (n=1 863 759 subjects). We used natural language processing (Savana Manager version 3.0) to identify those who were hospitalised during this period for any cause, including ECOPD.

Results: During the study 26 453 COPD patients (38.1%) were hospitalised (at least once). Main diagnoses at discharge were respiratory infection (51%), heart failure (38%) or pneumonia (19%). ECOPD was the main diagnosis at discharge (or hospital death) in 8331 patients (12.0% of the entire COPD population and 31.5% of those hospitalised). In-hospital ECOPD-related mortality rate was 3.11%. These patients were hospitalised 2.36 times per patient, with a mean hospital stay of 6.1 days. Heart failure was the most frequent comorbidity in patients hospitalised because of ECOPD (52.6%).

Conclusions: This analysis shows that, in a real-life setting, ECOPD hospitalisations are prevalent, complex (particularly in relation to heart failure), repetitive and associated with significant in-hospital mortality.