Predictive value of daily living score in acute respiratory failure of COPD patients requiring invasive mechanical ventilation pilot study

Abstract Background Mechanical ventilation (MV) is imperative in many forms of acute respiratory failure (ARF) in COPD patients. Previous studies have shown the difficulty to identify parameters predicting the outcome of COPD patients treated by invasive MV. Our hypothesis was that a non specialized score as the activities daily living (ADL) score may help to predict the outcome of these patients. Methods We studied the outcome of 25 COPD patients admitted to the intensive care unit for ARF requiring invasive MV. The patients were divided into those weaning success (group A n = 17, 68%) or failure (group B n = 8, 32%). We investigated the correlation between the ADL score and the outcome and mortality. Results The ADL score was higher in group A (5.1 ±1.1 vs 3.7 ± 0.7 in group B, p Conclusion Our pilot study demonstrates that the ADL score is predictive of weaning success and mortality at 6 months, suggesting that the assessment of daily activities should be an important component of ARF management in COPD patients.