Chronic Rhinitis Is a High-Risk Comorbidity for 30-Day Hospital Readmission of Patients with Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

BACKGROUND: Early hospital readmissions for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), measured as hospital readmission within 30 days from the last discharge, is a major economic burden to our health care system. The association of this measure with comorbid chronic rhinitis (CR) has not been investigated before despite significant clinical association between CR and asthma or COPD. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association of CR with the risk of asthma or COPD-related early hospital readmission rates. METHODS: This retrospective cohort study was performed using the asthma-and COPD-related hospital encounter and patient comorbidity data between June 15, 2012, and July 19, 2017, from a large hospital care system in Cincinnati, Ohio. Patients (any sex, race or socioeconomic status, and of all ages) with a primary discharge diagnosis of asthma (n=4754 patients, 10,111 encounters) and COPD (n=2176 patients, 4748 encounters) based on International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) codes were included. Relevant comorbidities, including comorbid allergic rhinitis (AR) or nonallergic rhinitis (NAR), in such patients were identified using ICD-10-CM codes. The association between 30-day asthma or COPD-related hospital readmission (1670 such encounters for asthma and 736 for COPD) and comorbid CR in the affected patients were determined using Cox proportional hazards models. Multivariate-adjusted hazard ratios (HRs), adjusted for relevant patient comorbidities, compared 30-day asthma-and COPD-related readmissions of patients with CR with those patients without a CR diagnosis. RESULTS: Analysis was performed on 4754 patients with asthma and 2176 patients with COPD. The median follow-up period (+interquartile range) for asthma was 980 (+760) days and for COPD was 553 (+827) days. The HRs for 30-day asthma-or COPD-related readmission rates were significantly higher in patients with AR (HR=4.4 [3.9, 5.0] and 2.4 [1.7, 3.2], respectively) or NAR (HR=3.7 [2.9, 4.9] and 2.6 [1.8, 3.7], respectively) compared with patients without rhinitis. For asthma, both AR and NAR had higher HRs compared with all other comorbidities analyzed. For COPD, both AR and NAR had HRs to the magnitude as obesity and hypertension. CONCLUSIONS: Comorbid CR is significantly associated with 30-day asthma-and COPD-related readmissions. These findings are useful for guiding health care professionals to focus on outpatient management of both the upper and lower respiratory tracts to reduce early readmission of patients with asthma and COPD. (C) 2019 American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology