As defined in the medical literature, pneumonia is the inflammation of the lung parenchyma (tissue) in which the air sacs (alveoli) fill with pus and may become solid typically due to an infection. Pneumonia can be caused by a variety of organisms including bacteria and viruses. The categorization of pneumonia is complicated but, briefly, pneumonia is grouped into two broad categories of community-acquired pneumonia and hospital- or healthcare-acquired pneumonia. The designation is important as it typically dictates the therapeutic intervention. The CURB-65 score was designed to establish a disposition for a patient with pneumonia. It assigns one point for each of the following criteria that a patient meets: Confusion, Uremia (BUN greater than 20), Respiratory rate greater than 30, Blood pressure less than 90/60 and age above 65. A score of 2 or above mandates admission to the hospital. This scoring system also provides insight into the mortality of a patient with pneumonia with the same score of 2 corresponding to a 30-day mortality rate of nearly 10%.
Pneumonia