Outcome of patients admitted to the hospital with suspected pneumonia

In 1976, 220 patients over 15 years of age were admitted to the adult medical services of Aurora Hospital, Helsinki, with a provisional diagnosis of pneumonia. All patients had an infiltrate on the chest X-ray. Acute pneumonia was found in 193 patients (87.7%). Other diseases in this series were pulmonary tuberculosis in 14 cases (6.4%), carcinoma of the lung in 6 cases (2.7%), and carcinoma of the lung with acute pneumonia in 5 cases (2.3%), aspergilloma in one case (0.5%) and an eosinophilic infiltrate in one case (0.5%). Previous or associated illnesses in the pneumonia patients were previous pneumonia (40.4%), chronic alcoholism (26.8%) and congestive heart failure (25.8%). The probable infectious aetiology of pneumonia was found in 45 cases (22.7%). The commonest agents were influenza A, 17 cases (8.6%); Pneumococcus, 9 cases (4.6%); and Mycoplasma pneumoniae 8 cases (4.0%). Bacteria were accepted causal if grown from blood cultures; tests for detecting antibodies against Pneumococcus were not used. Sputum cultures were not helpful in the study of bacterial pneumonia. Alcoholism seemed to predispose to pneumococcal pneumonia, but in the alcoholic patients leukocyte counts on admission were not lower than in the other patients. The overall mortality of pneumonia was 5.5%, only 3.5% of patients died during the first 3 weeks.