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Before antibiotics, pneumonia was called “the old man's friend” for carrying the old and infirm to a swift and relatively painless death. Now that short-term survival after pneumonia is the rule, does the disease provide any long-term prognostic information?
Veterans Administration researchers reviewed medical records of 392 patients in whom bacteriologically confirmed pneumococcal pneumonia was diagnosed at a single hospital during 10 years. Almost all patients were men (mean age, 63), and 48 (12%) died within 1 month of diagnosis. Among the remaining patients, the overall 10-year survival rate was <70%, which was substantially lower than the >95% expected rate for 63-year-old American men. When patients were stratified by severity of pneum…