Chest
Original Research: Critical Care MedicineImpact of Alcohol Abuse in the Etiology and Severity of Community-Acquired Pneumonia
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
All consecutive patients who had been hospitalized for CAP at our 1,000-bed teaching hospital were prospectively followed up from hospital admission to hospital discharge, from October 1996 to November 2001. CAP was defined as the presence of a new infiltrate seen on a chest radiograph together with symptoms that were suggestive of a lower respiratory tract infection and no alternative diagnosis during follow-up.11, 15 Patients with immunosuppression (eg, from solid organ or bone marrow
Results
Of the 1,511 patients who were hospitalized with CAP, 1,347 were included for analysis (Table 1). The data about daily ethanol ingestion were incomplete in 164 patients; therefore, they were withdrawn from the analysis. There were 128 A patients (10%), 54 EA patients (4%), and 1,165 NA patients (86%). A valid sample for microbiological diagnosis, including one or more samples from sputum, blood culture, urinary antigen (UAG) sample, bronchoalveolar secretions (BASs), PSB sample, or BALF, was
Discussion
The main findings of our study were the following: (1) patients with current or former alcohol abuse had an increased risk of acquiring a pneumococcal infection when compared to NA patients; (2) rates of antibiotic resistance and pneumococcal bacteremia did not differ among the groups; and (3) A patients presented with more severe forms of pneumonia. Alcoholism is known to be an important risk factor for pneumonia.10, 19, 20, 21 Alcohol abuse has been described to favor infection by specific
Acknowledgment
We want to thank Dr. Juan Caballeria from the Gastroenterology Department of the Hospital Clinic for his advice on the definitions regarding alcohol intake and liver disease.
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2021, Respiratory MedicineCitation Excerpt :A new infection with PA was found to be more prevalent with alcohol abuse (as recorded in the patients’ records). We explored the association of alcohol abuse because of the impact of this risk factor on the prevalence and etiology of community acquired pneumonia [37,38]. Although reported for S. pneumonia, PA was not previously found to complicate people with alcohol abuse, although increased risk of pneumonia overall was found among people with alcohol abuse.
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Reproduction of this article is prohibited without written permission from the American College of Chest Physicians (www.chestjournal.org/misc/reprints.shtml).
This research was supported by research fellowship grants from the European Respiratory Society to Dr. de Roux in 2001 and to Dr. Cavalcanti in 2003. The study was supported by grants Fondo de Investigación Sanitaria 99–0505, Red Grupo de Insuficiencia respiratoria aguda-ISCII-03/063, Red Respira-Instituto de Salud Carlos III-RTIC-03/11.