How accurately do people with COPD recall hospital admissions for exacerbations? Optimising clinical trial design.

The strongest predictor of experiencing a severe COPD exacerbation (flare-up) requiring hospital admission is having had a severe exacerbation in the last 12 months. As a result, a history of hospital admission for COPD, confirmed by medical record review, is often a key inclusion criteria for clinical trials testing new treatments for exacerbations. It would be easier and quicker to enrol patients in trials if we could rely on a patient's self-report of hospital admission, so that a medical record review was not required. The aim of this project is to test the accuracy of recall of hospital admissions over the preceding 12 months in people with COPD. We will use data we collected in the HomeBase2 trial, a randomised controlled trial testing 2 models of care for people with COPD that recruited over 400 people from 14 sites across Australia. We will compare self-report of hospitalisation in the 12 months prior to the trial to medical record-confirmed hospitalisation, to see whether patients accurately identify hospitalisations within the 12 month timeframe. If self-report of hospital admission proves to be accurate, this will make it quicker and cheaper to enrol patients, enabling patients to get access to new treatments more rapidly.