Association Between Cardiovascular Comorbidities and Clinical Outcomes in Patients Hospitalized for AECOPD

Purpose

To explore the association of cardiovascular disease (CVD) count and combinations with prolonged length of stay (LOS) and 1-year acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD)-related readmission among patients hospitalized for AECOPD. Patients and Methods: This single-centre retrospective study included 3684 admissions from 2281 patients with AECOPD between 2015 and 2024, without adjustment for baseline COPD severity. The assessed CVDs were hypertension (HTN), ischemic heart disease (IHD), arrhythmia, heart failure (HF), and peripheral arterial disease (PAD). The primary outcome was prolonged LOS, defined as a hospital stay of ≥ 14 days. Generalized estimating equation logistic regression models and Cox models with patient-level clustering were used to evaluate prolonged LOS and 1-year AECOPD-related readmission, respectively. Subgroup and sensitivity analyses assessed the robustness of the findings for prolonged LOS.