Comparison of two scores for short-term outcomes in patients with COPD exacerbation in the emergency department: the Ottawa COPD Risk Scale and the DECAF score.

Our physicians achieved high specificity but low sensitivity in predicting a poor outcome. The OCRS is the more sensitive of the two tools, while the DECAF score is more specific in predicting a poor outcome when all threshold values are evaluated. While both tools may results in unnecessary hospitalisation, they can reduce the incidence of hospital discharge of patients with exacerbations of COPD who will develop poor outcomes in the ED.