Lung India (Jan 2006)
Nutritional status predicts outcome in patients hospitalised with exacerbation of COPD
Abstract
Nutritional status affects outcome in acute illnesses. Weight loss is associated with poor lung functions and outcome in chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD). There is not much data on the effects of nutritional status on hospital outcome in patients with acute exacerbation of COPD. This study was conducted to address this issue. Twenty five patients with COPD admitted with acute exacerbation in a tertiary care teaching hospital in Southern India were studied. Lung functions were as-sessed by spirometry. Nutritional status was assessed using anthropometric mea-sures {body mass index (BMI), mid-arm circumference (MAC), triceps skin-fold thickness (TSF) and fat free mass (FFM)}. Resting energy expenditure (REE) was measured using indirect calorimetry. Hospital outcome was determined by mortal-ity, number of days to improve subjectively and number of days to discharge. Patients with a lower BMI, MAC and TSF took a longer time to recover. REE was found to be lower in patients with weight loss unlike the Western patients. On multivariate analysis, only a lower BMI was associated with a longer time to re-covery. Thus, nutritional status is an important predictor of hospital outcome in patients with COPD.
