COPD - anxiety and low health status lead to more rehospitalisations

Main Category: COPD
Article Date: 28 Aug 2005 - 21:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions  

Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are commonly frequently admitted to the hospital for acute exacerbations of their disease. Many risk factors have been identified for rehospitalisations. They include: higher age, lower lung function and lower health status. However, very little is known about the role of depression and anxiety as risk factors for rehospitalisations.

Therefore, Gunnar Gudmundssson (Landspitali University Hospital, Reykjavik, Iceland) and his North European colleagues studied a total of 406 patients from one university hospital in each of the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

They followed them for one year and studied how many had been rehospitalised during that time. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale that measures anxiety and depression, and St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) that measures health status, were applied to all patients.

The number of patients that had a readmission within 12 months was 246 (60%). Patients that had a readmission had lower lung function and health status. The risk of rehospitalisation was also increased in subjects with anxiety and in subjects with low health status. The patients that had the least activity had the highest risk of being admitted to the hospital.

This study identifies new risk factors for rehospitalisation in patients with COPD and draws attention to the role of anxiety and health status in patients with COPD.

This may have important implications for treatment of patients with COPD.

The European Respiratory Journal is the peer-reviewed scientific publication of the European Respiratory Society (more than 7,000 specialists in lung diseases and respiratory medicine in Europe, the United States and Australia).

http://erj.ersjournals.com

• Additional
• References
• Citations