You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Respiratory infection
Validation of predictive rules and indices of severity for community acquired pneumonia
Free
  1. S Ewig1,
  2. A de Roux2,
  3. T Bauer3,
  4. E García4,
  5. J Mensa4,
  6. M Niederman5,
  7. A Torres2
  1. 1Augusta Kranken-Anstalt Bochum, Klinik für Pneumologie, Beatmungsmedizin und Infektiologie, Bochum, Germany
  2. 2Servei de Pneumologia i Al.lèrgia Respiratoria, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
  3. 3Medical Clinic III, Bergmannsheil – University Clinic, Bochum, Germany
  4. 4Serveis de Malalties Infeccioses, Hospital Clinic, Barcelona, Spain
  5. 5Winthrop University Hospital, Mineola, New York, USA
  1. Correspondence to:
    Dr A Torres
    Hospital Clinic de Barcelona, Institut de Pneumologia i Cirurgia Toràcica, Villarroel 170, 08036 Barcelona, Spain; atorresmedicina.ub.es

Abstract

Background: A study was undertaken to validate the modified American Thoracic Society (ATS) rule and two British Thoracic Society (BTS) rules for the prediction of ICU admission and mortality of community acquired pneumonia and to provide a validation of these predictions on the basis of the pneumonia severity index (PSI).

Method: Six hundred and ninety six consecutive patients (457 men (66%), mean (SD) age 67.8 (17.1) years, range 18–101) admitted to a tertiary care hospital were studied prospectively. Of these, 116 (16.7%) were admitted to the ICU.

Results: The modified ATS rule achieved a sensitivity of 69% (95% CI 50.7 to 77.2), specificity of 97% (95% CI 96.4 to 98.9), positive predictive value of 87% (95% CI 78.3 to 93.1), and negative predictive value of 94% (95% CI 91.8 to 95.8) in predicting admission to the ICU. The corresponding predictive indices for mortality were 94% (95% CI 82.5 to 98.7), 93% (95% CI 90.6 to 94.7), 49% (95% CI 38.2 to 59.7), and 99.5% (95% CI 98.5 to 99.9), respectively. These figures compared favourably with both the BTS rules. The BTS-CURB criteria achieved predictions of pneumonia severity and mortality comparable to the PSI.

Conclusions: This study confirms the power of the modified ATS rule to predict severe pneumonia in individual patients. It may be incorporated into current guidelines for the assessment of pneumonia severity. The CURB criteria may be used as an alternative tool to PSI for the detection of low risk patients.

  • community acquired pneumonia
  • severity
  • prognosis
  • CAP, community acquired pneumonia
  • PSI, pneumonia severity index

https://doi.org/10.1136/thx.2003.008110

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Supplementary materials

    • Web-only Tables

      The supplementary tables are available as downloadable PDFs (printer friendly files).

      If you do not have Adobe Reader installed on your computer,
      you can download this free-of-charge, please Click here

       

      Files in this Data Supplement:

      • [View PDF] - Table S1 Risk class assessment according to pneumonia severity index (PSI)
      • [View PDF] - Table S2 Distribution of CURB criteria according to the pneumonia severity index (PSI) severity scoring system

    Footnotes

    • Supported by Red Gira ISCIII-03/063 and Red Respira ISCIII-RTIC-03/11 and FISS PI020616. AdR was the recipient of a European Respiratory Society long term research fellowship and TB was the recipient of a European Respiratory Society short term fellowship.