Loading...
Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is the most common potentially fatal infectious disease in developed countries. Clinical risk scores, such as the CRB-65 (which considers confusion, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and age >65), and measures of inflammation — such as C-reactive protein (CRP) level — have been validated for predicting short-term mortality in patients with this illness, but cardiovascular biomarkers may be even more useful.
In a recent study involving 728 consecutive adults with CAP, researchers from the German Competence Network for the Study of Community-Acquired Pneumonia (some of whom have financial connections to a company that manufactures biomarker assays) evaluated the ability of several such cardiovascular biomarke…