COPD Home Oxygen Therapy and Home Mechanical Ventilation: Improving Admission-Free Survival in Persistent Hypercapnic...

As seen in this CME online activity (available at http://journal.cme.chestnet.org/copd-hot-hmv), acute exacerbations of COPD are associated with significant levels of morbidity and mortality. Acute noninvasive ventilation has been demonstrated its clinical efficacy and cost-effectiveness in reducing intubation rate and mortality and in patients with acute decompensated hypercapnic exacerbations of COPD. However, those patients with evidence of chronic hypercapnic respiratory failure have worse long-term outcomes compared with patients who have only transient hypercapnia during the acute phase returning to eucapnia in the recovery stage. Indeed, there are limited options available to improve the clinical outcome in these COPD patients with persistent hypercapnia. The Home Oxygen Therapy-Home Mechanical Ventilation (HOT-HMV) trial investigated admission-free survival in patients with persistent hypercapnia following a life-threatening exacerbation requiring acute noninvasive ventilation. Phenotyping patients to ensure chronic hypercapnia enriched the trial population to identify those patients at highest risk of readmission or death following an exacerbation. The addition of home noninvasive ventilation to home oxygen therapy in patients with persistent hypercapnia led to improved admission-free survival. The noninvasive ventilation was titrated to overnight measures of transcutaneous CO₂ to achieve control of nocturnal hypoventilation, which improved daytime chronic respiratory failure. Home noninvasive ventilation is a complex intervention requiring a multidisciplinary team and long-term patient follow-up to maximize the clinical benefit to the patient.