Risk factors for early mortality in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis admitted to the emergency room

Background and objectives: Mortality of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) admitted to emergency departments is high. This study was aimed at analysing the risk factors associated with early mortality and designing a risk score based on simple parameters. Methods: This prospective case-control study enrolled patients admitted to the emergency department of a referral TB hospital. Clinical, radiological, biochemical and microbiological risk factors associated with death were compared among patients dying within one week from admission (cases) and those surviving (controls). Results: Forty-nine of 250 patients (19.6%) experienced early mortality. Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that oxygen saturation (SaO(2)) <90%, severe malnutrition, tachypnoea, tachycardia, hypotension, advanced disease at chest radiography, severe anaemia, hyponatremia, hypoproteinemia and hypercapnia were independently and significantly associated with early mortality. A clinical scoring system was further designed to stratify the risk of death by selecting five simple parameters (SpO(2) < 90%, tachypnoea, hypotension, advanced disease at chest radiography and tachycardia). This model predicted early mortality with a positive predictive value of 94.88% and a negative predictive value of 19.90%. Conclusions: The scoring system based on simple parameters may help to refer severely ill-patients early to a higher level to reduce mortality, improve success rates, minimise the needfor pulmonary rehabilitation and prevent post-treatment sequelae. (c) 2020 Sociedade Portuguesa de Pneumologia. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L.U. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).