Descriptive epidemiology of hospitalized patients with bacterial nosocomial pneumonia who experience 30-day readmission in the US, 2014-2019.

introductionNosocomial pneumonia (NP) remains associated with excess morbidity and mortality. The effect of NP on measures such as re-admission at 30 days remains unclear. Moreover, differing types of NP may have varying impacts on re-admissions.

methodsWe conducted a multicenter retrospective cohort study within the Premier Research database, a source containing administrative, pharmacy, and microbiology data. We compared NP patients readmitted with pneumonia (RaP) as the principal diagnosis to those readmitted for other reasons (RaO) with respect to the type of NP (ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia [VABP], ventilated hospital-acquired bacterial pneumonia [vHABP], and non-ventilated HABP [nvHABP]), and characteristics and outcomes of the index hospitalization.

resultsAmong 17,819 patients with NP, 14,123 (79.3%) survived to discharge, of whom 2,151 (15.2%) required an acute readmission within 30 days of index discharge. Of these, 106 (4.9%) were RaP, and the remainder were RaO. At index hospitalization, RaP patients were older (mean age [SD] 67.4 (13.9] vs. 63.0 [15.2] years), more likely medical (44.3% vs. 36.7%), and less chronically ill (median [IQR] Charlson scores (3 [2-5] vs. 4 [2-5]) than persons with RaO. Bacteremia (10.4% vs. 17.5%), need for vasopressors (15.1% vs. 20.0%), dialysis (9.4% vs. 16.5%), and/or sepsis (9.4% vs. 16.5%) or septic shock 14.2% vs. 17.1%) occurred less frequently in the RaP group. With respect to NP type, nvHABP was most common in RaP (47.2%) and VABP in RaO (38.1%).

conclusionsOne in seven survivors of a hospitalization complicated by NP requires an acute rehospitalization within 30 days. However, few of these readmissions had a principal diagnosis of pneumonia, irrespective of NP type. Of the 5% of NP subjects with RaP, the plurality initially suffered from nvHABP.