Solid organ transplant recipients with pneumonia face long-term mortality risk

Solid organ transplant recipients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) are younger, more often male, and have greater comorbidities compared with the general CAP population, according to a study. Contracting CAP as a transplant recipient also carries an increased risk of death within 1 year.

For the study, researchers used electronic medical records and looked at 7,449 patients who were hospitalized for CAP. Time to hospital discharge and short- and long-term mortality were the key outcomes. Propensity score weighting was applied to compensate for unequal distribution of factors that might influence the results across the compared groups.

Of the patients, 42 (0.56 percent) had undergone solid organ transplantation. Compared with the general nontransplant controls, solid organ transplant recipients were younger, more likely to be male, and had a prevalence of comorbidities.

In weighted logistic regression analysis, solid organ transplant recipients with CAP had greater odds of mortality, and this was true for in-hospital, at 30-day, and at 1-year mortality outcomes. The magnitude of increase in mortality for solid organ transplant recipients with CAP was greatest at 1 year with around 40-percent higher odds (odds ratio, 1.41, 95 percent confidence interval, 1.38–1.44).

The findings suggest that clinicians be vigilant toward the pronounced long-term mortality risk among solid organ transplant recipients with CAP and ensure continued follow-up care for these patients.