{"doi":"10.1093/cid/ciae418","title":"Preventability of Hospital Deaths in Patients With Non-Ventilator Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia","abstract":"BACKGROUND: Crude and adjusted mortality rates for patients with non-ventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia (NV-HAP) are among the highest of all healthcare-associated infections, leading to calls for greater prevention. Patients prone to NV-HAP, however, tend to be severely ill at baseline, making it unclear whether their high mortality rates are due to NV-HAP, their underlying conditions, or both. METHODS: Two infectious disease physicians conducted detailed medical record reviews on 150 randomly selected adults from 4 hospitals who died in-hospital following an NV-HAP event between April 2016 and May 2021. Reviewers abstracted risk factors, estimated the preventability of NV-HAP, identified causes of death, and adjudicated the preventability of death. RESULTS: The patients' median age was 69.3 (IQR, 60.7-77.4) years and 43.3% were female. Comorbidities were common: 57% had cancer, 30% chronic kidney disease, 29% chronic lung disease, and 27% had heart failure. At least 1 hospice-eligible condition was present before NV-HAP in 54% and \"Do Not Resuscitate\" orders in 24%. Most (99%) had difficult-to-modify NV-HAP risk factors: 76% altered mental status, 35% dysphagia, and 27% nasogastric/orogastric tubes. NV-HAP was deemed possibly or probably preventable in 21% and hospital death likely or very likely preventable in 8.6%. CONCLUSIONS: Most patients who die following NV-HAP have multiple, severe underlying comorbidities and difficult-to-modify risk factors for NV-HAP. Only 1 in 5 NV-HAPs that culminated in death and 1 in 12 deaths following NV-HAP were judged potentially preventable. This does not diminish the importance of NV-HAP prevention programs but informs expectations about the potential magnitude of their impact on hospital deaths.","journal":"Clinical Infectious Diseases","year":2024,"id":473866,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9074,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":709746,"name":"Anna Apostolopoulou","orcid":"0000-0002-8874-0980","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":243974,"name":"Anna A. Agan","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":16394,"name":"Laura DelloStritto","orcid":"0000-0003-0295-0010","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":237089,"name":"Chanu Rhee","orcid":"0000-0002-9537-4245","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":237090,"name":"Michael Klompas","orcid":"0000-0001-8641-4498","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":441437,"name":"Alexander M. Tatara","orcid":"0000-0001-8579-4302","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":24,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:06:04.967429Z","pmid":"39158997","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}