Almost one-third of patients hospitalized for an exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are readmitted to the hospital within 90 days. As such, researchers sought to identify biomarkers that predict relapse in order to prevent readmission in these patients.
In this prospective study, researchers assessed 106 patients (22% female, mean age, 73) admitted for COPD exacerbation. Hematological parameters were obtained from the first blood test result during admission. These variables included: red cell distribution width, mean platelet volume (MPV), platelet (PLT) count, neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio, PLT to lymphocyte ratio, MPV to PLT ratio, and eosinophil count. Patients were split into two groups for each hematological parameter according to median value, and the percentage of readmissions.
According to the results, almost a quarter of patients were readmitted within three months of discharge. The researchers noted that only the difference in low-MPV and high-MPV patients was significant (37% vs. 10%, P=0.001). They observed that the predictive capacity for three-month readmission measured by the area under the curve did not show clinically applicable values.
“Routine hematological parameters proposed as prognostic biomarkers in COPD obtained at the moment of hospital admission were not useful for predicting three-month readmission,” the researchers concluded.
Keywords: COPD, biomarkers, prognosis, readmission
