Validation of the CORB75 (confusion, oxygen saturation, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and age ≥75 years) as a simpler pneumonia severity rule

Purpose This study compares the ability of two simpler severity rules (classical CRB65 vs. proposed CORB75) in predicting short-term mortality in elderly patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). Methods A population-based study was undertaken involving 610 patients >= 65 years old with radiographically confirmed CAP diagnosed between 2008 and 2011 in Tarragona, Spain (350 cases in the derivation cohort, 260 cases in the validation cohort). Severity rules were calculated at the time of diagnosis, and 30-day mortality was considered as the dependent variable. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC) was used to compare the discriminative power of the severity rules. Results Eighty deaths (46 in the derivation and 34 in the validation cohorts) were observed, which gives a mortality rate of 13.1 % (15.6 % for hospitalized and 3.3 % for outpatient cases). After multivariable analyses, besides CRB (confusion, respiration rate >= 30/min, systolic blood pressure <90 mmHg or diastolic <= 60 mmHg), peripheral oxygen saturation (<= 90 %) and age >= 75 years appeared to be associated with increasing 30-day mortality in the derivation cohort. The model showed adequate calibration for the derivation and validation cohorts. A modified CORB75 scoring system (similar to the classical CRB65, but adding oxygen saturation and increasing the age to 75 years) was constructed. The AUC statistics for predicting mortality in the derivation and validation cohorts were 0.79 and 0.82, respectively. In the derivation cohort, a CORB75 score >= 2 showed 78.3 % sensitivity and 65.5 % specificity for mortality (in the validation cohort, these were 82.4 and 71.7 %, respectively). Conclusions The proposed CORB75 scoring system has good discriminative power in predicting short-term mortality among elderly people with CAP, which supports its use for severity assessment of these patients in primary care.