The Impact of Chronic Comorbidities on Outcomes in Acute Exacerbations of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis.

Introduction: Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a chronic progressive lung disease of unknown cause with a high associated mortality. We aimed to compare the impact of chronic medical conditions on hospital outcomes of patients with acute exacerbations of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (AE-IPF).

Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study using the NIS database from 2016 to 2018. We included patients aged 60 and older hospitalized in academic medical centers with the diagnoses of IPF and acute respiratory failure. We examined factors associated with hospital mortality and length of stay (LOS) using survey-weighted multivariate logistic and negative binomial regression.

Results: Out of 4975 patients with AE-IPF, 665 (13.4%) did not survive hospitalization. There was no difference in the mean age between survivors and non-survivors. Patients were more likely to be male, predominantly white, and have Medicare coverage. Most non-survivors were from households with higher median income. Hospital LOS was longer among non-survivors than survivors (9.4 days vs. 9.8 days; < 0.001). After multivariate-logistic regression, diabetes was found to be protective (aOR 0.62, 95% CI 0.50-0.77; < 0.0001) while chronic kidney disease (CKD) conferred a significantly higher risk of death after AE-IPF (aOR 6.85, 95% CI 1.90-24.7; = 0.00). Our multivariate adjusted negative binomial regression model for LOS identified obesity (IRR 0.85, 95% CI 0.76-0.94; ≤ 0.00) and hypothyroidism (IRR 0.90, 95% CI 0.83-0.98; = 0.02) to be associated with shorter hospital LOS.

Conclusions: Our results suggest that CKD is a significant contributor to hospital mortality in AE-IPF, and diabetes mellitus may be protective. Obesity and hypothyroidism are linked with shorter hospital LOS among patients hospitalized with AE-IPF in US academic medical centers.