Frailty and in-hospital mortality in older patients with acute exacerbation of COPD: A real-world prospective cohort study

Background

Few evidence exists for the effect of frailty on the patients admitted with an acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD).

Objective

We explored the link between frailty and in-hospital death in AECOPD, and whether laboratory indicators mediate this association.

Methods

This was a real-world prospective cohort study including older patients with AECOPD, consisting of two cohorts: a training set (n = 1356) and a validation set (n = 478). The independent prognostic factors, including frail status, were determined by multivariate logistic regression analysis. The relationship between frailty and in-hospital mortality was estimated by multivariable Cox regression. A nomogram was developed to provide clinicians with a quantitative tool to predict the risk of in-hospital death. Mediation analyses for frailty and in-hospital death were conducted.

Results

The training set included 1356 patients (aged 86.7 ± 6.6 years), and 25.0 % of them were frail. A nomogram model was created, including ten independent variables: age, sex, frailty, COPD grades, severity of exacerbation, mean arterial pressure (MAP), Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI), Interleukin-6 (IL-6), albumin, and troponin T (TPN-T). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROCs) was 0.862 and 0.845 for the training set and validation set, respectively. Patients with frailty had a higher risk of in-hospital death than those without frailty (HR,1.83, 95%CI: 1.14, 2.94; p = 0.013). Furthermore, CRP and albumin mediated the associations between frailty and in-hospital death.

Conclusions

Frailty may be an adverse prognostic factor for older patients admitted with AECOPD. CRP and albumin may be part of the immunoinflammatory mechanism between frailty and in-hospital death.