Allergy, Asthma and Immunology: Causes of death in asthma, COPD and non-respiratory hospitalized patients: a multicentric study

Research article

Jose Gregorio Soto-Campos¹^*, Vicente Plaza², Joan B Soriano³, Carlos Cabrera-López⁴,Carlos Almonacid-Sánchez⁵, Rosa Vazquez-Oliva⁶, Jose Serrano⁷, Aitor Ballaz-Quincoces⁸,Alicia Padilla-Galo⁹, Vanessa Santos¹⁰ and Grupo Emergente de Asma (GEA) del Área de Asma de la SEPAR

*Corresponding author: Jose G Soto-Campos josesoto@separ.es

Author Affiliations

¹Unidad de Gestion Clínica de Neumología y Alergia, Hospital de Jerez, C/ Sevilla n° 42; 1° J. C.P, Cádiz 11402, Spain

²Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona, Spain

³Programa de Epidemiología e Investigación Clínica, Fundación Caubet-CIMERA, Illes Balears, Spain

⁴Hospital Universitario de Gran Canaria Dr. Negrín, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain

⁵Hospital de Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Spain

⁶Hospital Infanta Elena, Huelva, Spain

⁷Hospital Comarcal de Inca, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

⁸Hospital de Galdakao, Vizcaya, Spain

⁹Hospital Costa del Sol, Málaga, Spain

¹⁰Fundación para la Gestión de la Investigación Biomédica de Cádiz, Cádiz, Spain

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BMC Pulmonary Medicine 2013, 13:73 doi:10.1186/1471-2466-13-73

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2466/13/73

Received:	30 November 2012
Accepted:	4 December 2013
Published:	10 December 2013

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Background

There is limited information on the causes of death in asthma patients.

To determine the causes of death in hospitalized asthmatic patients and to compare with those observed in COPD patients and non-respiratory individuals, with a particular interest in associations with previous cardiovascular disease.

Methods

Retrospective case–control study which analyzed the deaths of all hospitalized patients admitted for any reason during January, April, July and October of 2008 in 13 Spanish centers. Medical records of deceased patients were reviewed, and demographic and clinical data were collected.

Results

A total of 2,826 deaths (mean age 75 years, 56% men) were included in the analysis, of which 82 (2.9%) were of patients with asthma and 283 (10%) with COPD.

The most common causes of death in asthma patients were cardiovascular diseases (29.3%), malignancies (20.7%) and infections (14.6%); in COPD patients they were malignancies (26.5%), acute respiratory failure (25.8%) and cardiovascular diseases (21.6%). Asthma, compared to COPD patients, died significantly less frequently from acute respiratory failure and lung cancer. A multivariate logistic regression analysis failed to associate asthma with cardiovascular deaths.

Conclusions

Cardiovascular disease is the most frequent cause of death among hospitalized asthma patients. The specific causes of death differ between asthma and COPD patients.