Impact of severe lymphopenia on the early prediction of clinical outcome in hospitalized patients with pneumococcal community-acquired pneumonia

PURPOSE: To evaluate the impact of an optimal and reproducible cutoff value set according to a predefined lymphopenia scale as an early predictor of in-hospital mortality and other outcomes in patients hospitalized with pneumococcal pneumonia and positive urinary antigen at admission to the emergency department. METHODS: An observational cohort study was conducted based on analysis of a prospective registry of consecutive immunocompetent adults hospitalized for pneumococcal pneumonia in two tertiary hospitals. Generalized additive models were constructed to assess the smooth relationship between in-hospital mortality and lymphopenia. RESULTS: We included 1173 patients. Lymphopenia on admission was documented in 686 (58.4%). No significant differences were observed between groups regarding the presence of comorbidities. Overall, 299 (25.5%) patients were admitted to intensive care and 90 (7.6%) required invasive mechanical ventilation. Fifty-nine (5%) patients died, among them 23 (38.9%) in the first 72 h after admission. A lymphocyte count < 500/μL, documented in 282 (24%) patients, was the predefined cutoff point that best predicted in-hospital mortality. After adjustment, these patients had higher rates of intensive care admission (OR 2.9; 95% CI 1.9–4.3), invasive mechanical ventilation (OR 2.2; 95% CI 1.2–3.9), septic shock (OR 1.8; 95% CI 1.1–2.9), treatment failure (OR 2.1; 95% CI 1.2–3.5), and in-hospital mortality (OR 2.2; 95% 1.1–4.9). Severe lymphopenia outperformed PSI score in predicting early and 30-day mortality in patients classified in the higher-risk classes. CONCLUSION: Lymphocyte count < 500/μL could be used as a reproducible predictor of complicated clinical course in patients with an early diagnosis of pneumococcal pneumonia.