Introduction Previous studies have shown that high lactate and CURB65 scores are associated with increased mortality and morbidity in patients with community acquired pneumonia (CAP). We attempted to investigate a simple way to identify those patients who are likely to have prolonged hospital admission from CAP by using different biomarker.

Method We included first 50 patients who were diagnosed to have CAP by respiratory physicians on admission at Russell’s Hall hospital, Dudley in December 2012. We calculated CURB scores and measured their lactate level, serum albumin and white cells count on admission. We also monitored their albumin levels throughout the admission. We then examined the association between these factors and LOS using Spearman's rank correlation coefficient (RS).

Results There was no mortality from CAP in our study population. Mean length of stay was 7 days (1–41). There was positive correlation between CURB65 and LOS (Rs = 0.41, p = 0.003). We did not observe any statistically significant correlation between the lactate level, albumin level or white cell count on admission and the LOS. Interestingly, we noticed that there was a statistically significant negative correlation with the day 3–5 albumin level with LOS (Rs = -0.522, p = 0.000627).

Conclusions Our study suggests that low albumin on day 3–5 increases hospital LOS therefore it could be postulated that early nutritional intervention to keep higher level of albumin might decrease length of stay. We also believe that combing admission CURB65 and day 3 albumin will give us better tool to predict LOS but prospective study is needed to evaluate these findings further.