The Predictive Performance of a Pneumonia Severity Score in Human Immunodeficiency Virus-negative Children Presenting to Hospital in 7 Low- and Middle-income Countries.

Background: In 2015, pneumonia remained the leading cause of mortality in children aged 1-59 months.

Methods: Data from 1802 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-negative children aged 1-59 months enrolled in the Pneumonia Etiology Research for Child Health (PERCH) study with severe or very severe pneumonia during 2011-2014 were used to build a parsimonious multivariable model predicting mortality using backwards stepwise logistic regression. The PERCH severity score, derived from model coefficients, was validated on a second, temporally discrete dataset of a further 1819 cases and compared to other available scores using the C statistic.