The Modified APACHE II Score Outperforms Curb65 Pneumonia Severity Score as a Predictor of 30-Day Mortality in Patients With Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Pneumonia

ObjectiveTo compare the predictive accuracy for 30-day mortality of the CURB65 score adopted by the British Thoracic Society and the simpler CRB65 score to APACHE (acute physiology and chronic health evaluation) II in patients with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) pneumonia.DesignA retrospective, single-center, observational cohort study.SettingBarnes-Jewish Hospital, a 1,200-bed urban teaching hospital.PatientsAdult patients requiring hospitalization identified to have MRSA pneumonia.InterventionsRetrospective data collection from automated hospital, microbiology, and pharmacy databases.Measurements and main resultsTwo hundred eighteen patients with MRSA pneumonia were identified over a 3-year period. Forty-four patients (20.2%) died during hospitalization. All three prediction rules had high negative predictive values but relatively low positive predictive values at most cut-off points examined. APACHE II had the greatest area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (0.805; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.743 to 0.866) compared to CURB65 (0.634; 95% CI, 0.541 to 0.727) and CRB65 (0.643; 95% CI, 0.546 to 0.739) [p < 0.05 for both comparisons]. Similar results were obtained when the subgroups of community-acquired MRSA pneumonia and health-care–associated MRSA pneumonia were examined separately.ConclusionsAPACHE II outperformed CURB65 and CRB65 for initial prognostic assessment in MRSA pneumonia.