Adults miscoded and misdiagnosed as having pneumonia: results from the British Thoracic Society pneumonia audit

A key objective of the British Thoracic Society national community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) audit was to determine the clinical characteristics and outcomes of hospitalised adults given a primary discharge code of pneumonia but who did not fulfil accepted diagnostic criteria for pneumonia. Adults mi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Daniel, Priya, Bewick, Thomas, Welham, Sally, McKeever, Tricia M., Lim, Wei Shen
Format: Article
Published: BMJ Publishing Group 2017
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/43587/
Description
Summary:A key objective of the British Thoracic Society national community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) audit was to determine the clinical characteristics and outcomes of hospitalised adults given a primary discharge code of pneumonia but who did not fulfil accepted diagnostic criteria for pneumonia. Adults miscoded as having pneumonia (n=1251) were older compared with adults with CAP (n=6660) (median 80 vs 78 years, p<0.001) and had more comorbid disease, significantly fewer respiratory symptoms (fever, cough, dyspnoea, pleuritic pain), more constitutional symptoms (general deterioration, falls) and significantly lower 30-day inpatient mortality (14.3% vs 17.0%, adjusted OR 0.75, p=0.003).