C-reactive protein, severity of pneumonia and mortality in elderly, hospitalised patients with community-acquired pneumonia.

Background: increasingly, markers of systemic inflammation like C-reactive protein (CRP) levels and white blood count (WBC) are being used for assessing the prognosis of patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). However, their predictive value has not been validated in populations of elderly patients.

Objective: to evaluate the prognostic value of CRP and WBC in comparison with the CURB score and the pneumonia severity index (PSI) in elderly, hospitalised patients with CAP.