Refining COPD Exacerbation Risk Categories Enhances Prediction of Future Episodes

Highlight

• The standard COPD exacerbation risk definition (≥2 moderate or ≥1 severe exacerbation in the past year) has limited discriminative power.
• In both COPDGene and NOVELTY cohorts, considering any moderate or severe exacerbation within the prior two years yielded superior accuracy (AUC up to 0.87) for predicting future exacerbations.
• Using rolling two-year exacerbation windows also provided the highest clinical utility across relevant treatment thresholds (5%-30%) for initiating or intensifying therapy.

Study Background