TY  - JOUR
AU  - Cintora-Sanz, Ana María
AU  - Horrillo-García, Cristina
AU  - Quesada-Cubo, Víctor
AU  - Pérez-Alonso, Ana María
AU  - Gutiérrez-Misis, Alicia
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/1/16
TI  - Prevalence and Economic Impact of Acute Respiratory Failure in the Prehospital Emergency Medical Service of the Madrid Community: Retrospective Cohort Study
JO  - JMIR Public Health Surveill
SP  - e66179
VL  - 11
KW  - acute respiratory failure
KW  - COVID-19
KW  - chronic obstructive respiratory insufficiency
KW  - congestive heart failure
KW  - bronchospasm
KW  - emergency medical services costs
KW  - ambulances
KW  - SARS-CoV-2
KW  - coronavirus
KW  - respiratory
KW  - pulmonary
KW  - pandemic
KW  - economic impact
KW  - observational
KW  - Madrid
KW  - community
KW  - medical records
KW  - health records
KW  - medical advanced life support
KW  - ALS
KW  - acute pulmonary edema
KW  - chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
KW  - COPD
KW  - prevalence
AB  - Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), congestive heart failure (CHF), and acute pulmonary edema (APE) are serious illnesses that often require acute care from prehospital emergency medical services (EMSs). These respiratory diseases that cause acute respiratory failure (ARF) are one of the main reasons for hospitalization and death, generating high health care costs. The prevalence of the main respiratory diseases treated in a prehospital environment in the prepandemic period and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain is unknown. The Madrid Community EMS is a public service that serves all types of populations and represents an epidemiological reference for supporting a population of 6.4 million inhabitants. The high volume of patients treated by Madrid’s medical advanced life supports (ALSs) allows us to analyze this little-studied problem. Objectives: Our goal was to lay the groundwork for comprehensive data collection and surveillance of respiratory failure, with an emphasis on the most prevalent diseases that cause it, an aspect that has been largely overlooked in previous initiatives. By achieving these objectives, we hope to inform efforts to address respiratory failure and establish a standardized methodology and framework that can facilitate expansion to a continuous community-wide registry in Madrid, driving advances in emergency care and care practices in these pathologies. The aim of this retrospective observational study was to determine the pathologies that have mainly caused respiratory failure in patients and required medicalized ALS and to evaluate the cost of care for these pathologies collected through this pilot registry. Methods: A multicenter descriptive study was carried out in the Madrid Community EMS. The anonymized medical records of patients treated with medical ALS, who received any of the following medical diagnoses, were extracted: ARF not related to chronic respiratory disease, ARF in chronic respiratory failure, exacerbations of COPD, APE, CHF, and bronchospasm (not from asthma or COPD). The prevalence of each pathology, its evolution from 2014 to 2020, and the economic impact of the Medical ALSs were calculated. Results: The study included 96,221 patients. The most common pathology was exacerbation of COPD, with a prevalence of 0.07% in 2014; it decreased to 0.03% in 2020. CHF followed at 0.06% in 2014 and 0.03% in 2020. APE had a prevalence of 0.01% in 2014, decreasing to 0.005% in 2020 with the pandemic. The greatest economic impact was on exacerbation of COPD in 2015, with an annual cost of €2,726,893 (which equals to US $2,864,628). Conclusions: COPD exacerbations had the higher prevalence in the Madrid region among the respiratory diseases studied. With the COVID-19 pandemic, the prevalence and costs of almost all these diseases decreased, except for ARF not related to chronic disease. The cost of these pathologies over 5 years was €58,791,031 (US $61,832,879). 
SN  - 2369-2960
UR  - https://publichealth.jmir.org/2025/1/e66179
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2196/66179
DO  - 10.2196/66179
ID  - info:doi/10.2196/66179
ER  -