Conclusion: Admission between Thursday and Saturday, heart failure, diabetes, stroke, high
arterial PCO
2, and low serum albumin level were associated with a prolonged LOS. These
fndings may help physicians to identify patients that will need a prolonged LOS in the early
stages of admission. However, the predictive model exhibited suboptimal performance and
hence is not ready for clinical use.
Keywords: exacerbation, COPD, predictors, length of stay, predicting model