Journal article

Hospitalized community-acquired pneumonia in the elderly: an Australian case-cohort study

SA Skull, RM Andrews, GB Byrnes, DA Campbell, HA Kelly, GV Brown, TM Nolan

EPIDEMIOLOGY AND INFECTION | CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS | Published : 2009

Abstract

This study describes the epidemiology of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in elderly Australians for the first time. Using a case-cohort design, cases with CAP were in-patients aged > or = 65 years with ICD-10-AM codes J10-J18 admitted over 2 years to two tertiary hospitals. The cohort sample was randomly selected from all hospital discharges, frequency-matched to cases by month. Logistic regression was used to estimate risk ratios for factors predicting CAP or associated mortality. A total of 4772 in-patients were studied. There were 1952 cases with CAP that represented 4% of all elderly admissions: mean length of stay was 9.0 days and 30-day mortality was 18%. Excluding chest radiograph,..

View full abstract

Grants

Awarded by National Health and Medical Research Council


Awarded by National Health and Medical Research Council Capacity Building Grant in Population Health


Funding Acknowledgements

This study was jointly funded by the Victorian Government Department of Human Services and the National Health and Medical Research Council (grant no. 146500). Graham Byrnes is supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council Capacity Building Grant in Population Health (251533). The sponsors of the study had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or preparation or approval of the report. This study was Supported by research assistants responsible for data collection: Anne-Marie Woods, Carol Roberts, Caroline Watts and Joy Turner, with data entry by Thao Nguyen and Jason Zhu.