Validation of the Rome proposal for severity of acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

The Rome proposal provides an objective assessment tool for severity of acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AE-COPD) but requires validation.

We aimed to evaluate the predictive performance of the Rome proposal in patients with AE-COPD.

This observational study assessed the patients who visited the emergency room (ER) or were hospitalized due to AE-COPD between January 2010 and December 2020.

We compared the performance of the Rome Proposal with that of the DECAF score or GesEPOC 2021 criteria in predicting intensive care unit (ICU) admission, need for non-invasive ventilation (NIV) or invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV), and in-hospital mortality.

A total of 740 events of ER visit or hospitalization due to AE-COPD were reviewed and classified into mild (30.9%), moderate (58.6%), or severe (10.4%) group according to the Rome proposal. The severe group had a higher rate of ICU admission, required more NIV or IMV, and had a higher in-hospital mortality than the mild and moderate groups. The predictive performance of the Rome proposal was significantly better for ICU admission [area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AU-ROC) = 0.850 versus 0.736, p = 0.004] and need for NIV or IMV (AU-ROC = 0.870 versus 0.770, p = 0.004) than that of the GesEPOC 2021 criteria but better than that of the DECAF score only in female patients. There was no significant difference in predicting the in-hospital mortality between the Rome proposal and DECAF score or GesEPOC 2021 criteria.

External validation of the Rome Proposal in Korean patients demonstrated excellent performance for ICU admission and need for NIV or IMV and an acceptable performance for in-hospital mortality.