Expanded A-DROP Score: A New Scoring System for the Prediction of Mortality in Hospitalized Patients with Community-acquired Pneumonia

There are several established prognostic scoring systems for community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). The Pneumonia Severity Index (PSI) is a prediction rule consisting of 20 variables to identify low-risk patients with CAP. Although PSI had high discrimination ability, it is complex to calculate and difficult to use in busy hospital settings. The CURB-65 score is much simpler to use than is PSI, but it has lower sensitivity for predicting mortality compared with PSI. The A-DROP score is a modified version of the CURB-65 score and provides similar predictive power to that of CURB-65. This study was performed to determine whether a simpler score (CURB-65, A-DROP), expanded with a small number of additional variables, can predict mortality more accurately than PSI. We conducted a retrospective observational study of 1,031 patients with CAP who were hospitalized at a tertiary teaching hospital. We used age, sex, comorbidities, vital signs, and laboratory findings as prognostic variables. We compared the PSI, CURB-65, and A-DROP scores using receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. The areas under the curves (AUCs) of PSI, CURB-65, and A-DROP were 0.735, 0.701, and 0.730, respectively.Multivariable analysis identified malignancy [odds ratio (OR): 2.17, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.13–4.17], respiration rate ≥ 24/min [OR: 2.18, 95% CI: 1.24–3.82], heart rate ≥ 100/min [OR: 2.92, 95% CI: 1.68–5.08], albumin ≤ 3.09 g/dL [OR: 3.85, 95% CI: 2.09–7.07], lactate > 1.7 mmol/L [OR: 2.59, 95% CI: 1.53–4.38], and N-terminal prohormone brain natriuretic peptide > 500 pg/mL [OR: 2.23, 95% CI: 1.26–3.95] as prognostic factors. Using the prognostic variables identified in the multivariable analysis, we assembled a new scoring system, the expanded A-DROP score. The AUC of this score for the prediction of 28-day mortality was 0.834 (95% CI: 0.794–0.874). Bootstrap validation yielded an estimated AUC of 0.833, indicating negligible overfitting of the model.The expanded A-DROP score is a relatively simple and effective scoring system, and its predictive value was superior to those of other scoring systems.