Pneumonia admissions to the ICU: Prevalence of comorbidities and outcome

Background: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients with pneumonia have significant mortality and morbidity. Objectives: To identify different types and outcomes of pneumonia cases admitted to ICU in our center and the prevalence of comorbidities in death and survival cases. Methods: We enrolled a total of 94 ICU patients presented with pneumonia during January 2015 to March 2020. We described the prevalence of types of pneumonia and associated comorbidities (diabetes (DM), hypertension (HTN), congestive heart failure (CHF), bronchial asthma (BA), and chronic obstructive airway diseases (COPD)) among cases. We also reported the outcome in terms of death rate and length of stay in ICU. Results: This study included 94 participants with an average age of 58.3 (+/- 18.6) and 43.6% were female. The prevalence of DM, HTN, CHF, BA and COPD were (51.1%, 55.3%, 25.5%, 4.3%, 8.5%) respectively. Pneumonia types were community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in 62.8%, atypical pneumonia in 15.9%, aspiration pneumonia in 15.9%, and hospital-acquired pneumonia in 3.2%. The crude death rate was 35.1%. Death cases were associated with decompensated heart failure in 18.8%, other coexistent infection in 6.1%, and bedridden cases in 9.1%. HTN, DM, CHF, COPD and BA were similarly distributed between death and survival cases. Conclusion: The crude mortality rates of pneumonia patients in the ICU remain high. CAP was the most common type. The prevalence of measured comorbidities was similar between death and survival cases. The strength of care provided to ICU pneumonia cases should not be negatively influenced by the presence of these measured comorbidities alone.