A mortality prediction rule for non-elderly patients with community-acquired pneumonia

BACKGROUND: No mortality prediction rule is suited for non-elderly patients with community-acquired pneumonia. Therefore, we tried to create a mortality prediction rule that is simple and suitable for non-elderly patients with community-acquired pneumonia. METHODS: Because of low mortality at young age, we used information from an administrative database that included A-DROP data. We analysed the rate and risk factors for in-hospital community-acquired pneumonia-associated death among non-elderly patients and created a mortality prediction rule based on those risk factors. RESULTS: We examined 49,370 hospitalisations for patients aged 18–64 years with community-acquired pneumonia. The 30-day fatality rate was 1.5 %. Using regression analysis, five risk factors were selected: patient requires help for feeding, the existence of malignancy, confusion, low blood pressure, and age 40–64 years. Each risk factor of our proposed mortality risk scoring system received one point. A total point score for each patient was obtained by summing the points. The negative likelihood ratio for the score 0 group was 0.01, and the positive likelihood ratio for the score ≥4 group was 19.9. The area under the curve of the risk score for non-elderly (0.86, 95 % confidence interval: 0.84–0.87) was higher than that of the A-DROP score (0.72, 95 % confidence interval: 0.70–0.74) (P < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: Our newly proposed mortality risk scoring system may be appropriate for predicting mortality in non-elderly patients with community-acquired pneumonia. It showed a possibility of a better prediction value than the A-DROP and is easy to use in various clinical settings. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12890-016-0199-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.