Most in-hospital deaths from community-acquired pneumonia are not preventable with current medical therapy, according to an analysis of deaths at five U.S. hospitals with expertise in pneumonia care.
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Adults who are hospitalized with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) are at high risk for short-term mortality but it is unclear whether an improvement in care could lower this risk, noted the study authors led by Grant W. Waterer, MBBS, PhD, of Northwestern University, Chicago.
“Understanding the circumstances in which CAP patients die could facilitate improvements in the management of CAP by enabling future improvement efforts to focus on common preventable causes of death,” they wrote. Their report was published in CHEST®.
They therefore performed a secondary analysis of the Etiology of Pneumonia in the Community (EPIC) study involving adults hospitalized with CAP between January 2010 and June 2012 across five tertiary-care hospitals in the United States.
The clinical characteristics of patients who died in the hospital were compared with those of patients who survived to hospital discharge. Chronic heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coronary artery disease, chronic liver disease, cerebrovascular disease, cancer (excluding skin cancer), and diabetes were considered as severe chronic comorbidities based on their association with increased mortality and ICU admission in CAP severity scores.
Deaths caused by septic shock, respiratory failure, multisystem organ failure, cardiopulmonary arrest prior to stabilization of CAP, and endocarditis, were considered to be directly related to CAP.
Conversely, causes of death indirectly related to CAP included acute cardiovascular disease, stroke, acute renal failure, and secondary infections developed after hospitalization. Deaths caused by cancer, cirrhosis, and chronic neurologic conditions were considered unrelated to CAP.
Medical notes were assessed to determine whether the patient received management consistent with current recommendations; for example, antibiotics consistent with guidelines from the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
End-of-life limitations in care, such as patient/family decision not to proceed with full medical treatment, also were considered by the research team.
Results showed that among the 2,320 patients with radiographically confirmed CAP, 52 died during initial hospitalization, 33 of whom were aged 65 years or older, and 32 of whom had two or more chronic comorbidities.
Most of the in-hospital deaths occurred early in the hospitalization: 35 within the first 10 days of admission, and 5 after 30 days in hospital.
CAP was judged by an expert physician review panel to be the direct cause of death in 27 of the patients, 10 with CAP having an indirect role with major contribution, 9 with CAP having an indirect role with minor contribution, and 6 with CAP having no role in death.
Do-not-resuscitate orders were present at the time of death for 21 of the patients.
Forty-five of the patients were admitted to an ICU, with 37 dying in the ICU. The eight patients who died on the ward after transfer out of the ICU had end-of-life limitations of care in place.
The researchers noted that the number of patients dying in the ICU was greater in the United States, possibly because in Europe fewer patients are admitted to an ICU.
“This discrepancy likely reflects cultural differences between the U.S. and Europe in the role of intensive care for patients with advanced age and/or advanced comorbid conditions,” they noted.
Overall, the physician review panel identified nine patients who had a lapse in quality of in-hospital CAP care, with four of the deaths potentially linked to this lapse in care.
However, two of the patients had end-of-life limitations of care in place, which according to the authors meant that “only two patients undergoing full medical treatment without end-of-life limitations of care had an identified lapse in quality of in-hospital pneumonia care potentially contributing to in-hospital death, including one with a delay in antibiotics for over an hour in the presence of shock and one with initial antibiotics not consistent with IDSA/ATS guidelines.”
The research team concluded that most in-hospital deaths among adult patients admitted with CAP in their study would not have been preventable with higher quality in-hospital pneumonia care.
“Many of the in-hospital deaths among patients admitted with CAP occurred in older patients with severe comorbidities and end-of-life limitations in care,” they noted.
They said the influence of end-of-life limitations on care short of full palliation was an important finding, with all patients who died outside the ICU having end-of-life limitations in care.
“Current diagnostic related group (DRG) and international classification of diseases (ICD) coding systems do not have the necessary nuances to capture these limitations of care, yet they are clearly important factors in determining whether patients experience in-hospital death,” they added.
Dr. Waterer reported no conflicts. Two coauthors reported potential conflicts of interest in relation to consulting fees from several pharmaceutical companies.
SOURCE: Waterer G. et al. CHEST 2018;154(3):628-35. doi: 10.1016/j.chest.2018.05.021.