Mortality Among Older Patients with Community-Acquired Pneumonia

In the U.S., the most common infectious cause of death is community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). Using a random 20% sample of Medicare claims data from 1987 to 2005, researchers evaluated 30-day CAP mortality trends.

More than 2.6 million CAP patients (age, ≥65) were included in the analysis (1.1 million outpatients and 1.5 million inpatients). Between those years, the proportion of CAP patients treated as inpatients declined from 63% to 56%, and overall mortality fell from 13.5% to 9.7%. The reduction in mortality was greater among inpatients than among outpatients, and the reductions remained after controlling for the presence of comorbidities.