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Assessment of illness severity is important in the management of patients with pneumonia. Scoring systems, such as CURB65 and the Pneumonia Severity Index (PSI), have been shown to correlate with illness severity, but their complexity makes them underused. Measurement of d-dimer, a product of fibrin degradation, has proven useful in the evaluation of patients with diseases related to abnormal thrombosis, such as pulmonary embolism and deep venous thrombosis, but has not yet been used in the work-up of other diseases.
In a prospective study, researchers in the U.K. assessed whether serum levels of d-dimer correlated with illness severity in a convenience sample of 314 patients with community-acquired pneumonia. d-dimer level was measured with…