Hai-yan Li

Mortality among severe community-acquired pneumonia patients depends on combinations of 2007 IDSA/ATS minor criteria

OBJECTIVES The individual 2007 Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA)/American Thoracic Society (ATS) minor criteria for severe community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) are of unequal weight in predicting mortality. It is not clear whether the combinations of predictive findings might imply diverse severities or different mortalities. METHODS A prospective two centre cohort study was performed of 385 severe CAP patients fulfilling three or more IDSA/ATS minor criteria amongst 1430 patients. RESULTS Hospital mortality rose sharply from 5.7%, 9.9%, and 16.5%, respectively, for patients with none of three predictive findings most strongly associated to mortality (PaO2/FiO2 ≤ 250mm Hg, confusion and uraemia), one of those, and two of those to 38.6% for patients with all those (p<0.001). The number of three predictive findings present had a significantly increased odds ratio for mortality of 2.796 (p<0.001), and had the degree of positive association with sequential organ failure assessment scores at 72hours, incurring significantly longer hospital stay and higher costs. CONCLUSIONS Different combinations of 2007 IDSA/ATS minor criteria for severe CAP were associated to diverse severities and different mortalities. The combination of PaO2/FiO2 ≤ 250mm Hg, confusion and uraemia predicted more severity and higher mortality compared with others.

CUR-65 Score for Community-Acquired Pneumonia Predicted Mortality Better Than CURB-65 Score in Low–Mortality Rate Settings

Background:It is not clear whether low-blood pressure criterion could be removed from CURB-65 (confusion, urea >7 mmol/L, respiratory rate ≥30/min, low blood pressure and age ≥65 years) score to orchestrate an improvement in identifying patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in low–mortality rate settings. Methods:A retrospective cohort study of 1,230 CAP patients was performed to simplify the CURB-65 scoring system by excluding low-blood pressure variable. The simplification was validated in a prospective 2-center cohort of 1,409 adults with CAP. Results:The hospital mortalities were 1.3% and 3.8% in the retrospective and prospective cohorts, respectively. The mortality rates in the 2 cohorts increased directly with the increasing scores, showing significant increased odds ratios for mortality. The pattern of sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and Youdens index of a CUR-65 (Confusion, Urea >7 mmol/L, Respiratory rate ≥30/min and age ≥65 years) score of ≥2 for prediction of mortality was better than that of a CURB-65 score of ≥3 in the retrospective cohort. Higher values of corresponding indices were confirmed in the validation cohort. The higher accuracy of CUR-65 score for predicting mortality was illustrated by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.937, compared with 0.915 for CURB-65 score in the retrospective cohort (P = 0.0073). The validation cohort confirmed a similar paradigm (0.953 versus 0.907, P = 0.0002). Conclusions:CURB-65 score could be simplified by removing low blood pressure to orchestrate an improvement in predicting mortality in CAP patients who have a low risk of death. A CUR-65 score of ≥2 might be a more valuable cutoff value for severe CAP.