Researchers in Scotland have developed a risk calculator using a large electronic health records database that has shown a high reliability in predicting the risk of death for patients hospitalized for chronic occlusive pulmonary disease (COPD), providing another potential tool for improving post-discharge survival in these patients.
In a study published online in the journal Pharmacological Research, Pierpalo Pellicori, MD, and colleagues reported that a few variables, including prescriptions and laboratory data in routine electronic health records (EHRs), could help predict a patient's risk of dying within 90 days after a hospital stay for COPD. Pellicori is a clinical cardiologist and research fellow at the Robertson Center for Biostatistics at the University of Glasgow in Scotland.
"Identification of patients at high risk is valuable information for multidisciplinary teams," Pellicori said in written comments submitted to Medscape Medical News. "It allows the most vulnerable patients to be highlighted and prioritized for consideration of optimized value-based care, and for anticipatory care plan discussions."
The retrospective cohort study analyzed EHR records of 17,973 patients who had an unplanned hospitalization for COPD in the Glasgow area from 2011 to 2017. The risk calculator model achieved a potential accuracy of 80%.
The study noted that while a number of models have been developed to calculate the risk of exacerbations, inpatient death and prognosis in patients hospitalized for COPD, most of those models were based on cohorts of 1000 patients or less.
