Value of Neutrophil to Lymphocyte Ratio in Prognosis of Elderly Patients with Community Acquired Pneumonia Compared to CRP Level

Abstract

Abstract Background Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a common, potentially fatal disease despite advances in both diagnosis and treatment. Community-acquired pneumonia is the most common type of pneumonia. It occurs outside of hospitals or other health care facilities. Community acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a frequent and severe infection associated with a high mortality. Objectives This work aims to evaluate the role of neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio in prognosis of elderly patients with community acquired pneumonia compared to CRP level. Patients and Methods This prospective study was conducted upon 30 elderly patients in chest department at Ain shams University hospitals with community acquired pneumonia. All patients were diagnosed as having CAP by presence of new infiltrates in chest radiography associated with clinical picture. Clinical examination, traditional tests such as Confusion, Urea, Respiratory rate, Blood pressure, aged 65 and older (CURB-65), CRP level and NLR were evaluated at admission and after two weeks of admission. The predictive value for 30-day mortality of traditional tests and NLR were compared. Results The present study found that mean age of the studied cases was 72.9 ± 5.14 years old, 20 (66.7%) of patients were males while 10 (33.3%) were females. All patients had co-morbidities with diabetes mellitus and renal impairment the most common by percentage of 36.7%. There was highly significant correlation between neutrophil/lymphocyte count ratio (NLCR), neutrophil count and lymphocytic count and the outcome of CAP patients (p = 0.000, 0.004, 0.000 respectively) compared to other inflammatory biomarkers like WBC count (p = 0.02) and CRP (p = 0.521) and CURB-65 score (p = 0.074). This study showed that no deaths occurred in patients with NLR below 10, mortality was 8.3% in patients with NLR between 10 and 20 and 91.7% in patients with a NLR above 20. NLCR remain high with no significant difference in follow up labs among patients who died. Conclusion NLR showed emerging prognostic value in predicting outcome and 30day mortality rate in community acquired pneumonia. Unlike many other inflammatory markers and bioassays, NLR is an inexpensive, easy to handle, cost effective and readily available marker that is obtained from basic blood count providing an additional advantage in predicting hospitalization period and mortality.