Cent Eur J Public Health 2009, 17(4):203-206 | DOI: 10.21101/cejph.b0014

A Bronchiectatic Patient's Risk of Pneumonia and Prognosis

Olli Säynäjäkangas¹, Timo Keistinen²

¹ Lapland Central Hospital, Department of Pulmonary Diseases, Rovaniemi, Finland

² Institute of Health Sciences, University of Oulu, and Vaasa Health Care Region, Vaasa, Finland

The objective of this study was to define the morbidity and mortality of bronchiectatic patients.
All records from the years 1993-2004 of patients with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and bronchiectasis as the primary diagnosis were extracted from the Finnish Hospital Discharge Register. The data of these patients' deaths until the end of the year 2004 were acquired from Statistics Finland. These materials were analyzed in order to find each bronchiectatic patient of this period an asthma or COPD control subject who was of the same age and sex and had also been hospitalized in the same year. Their numbers of pneumonia and prognoses were compared with each other during the study period.
59.4% of all bronchiectasis treatment periods in absolute numbers were for people aged 65 years or over. The occurrence of pneumonia in bronchiectatic patients was 1.03 (95% CI 0.82-1.24) per follow-up year, while the corresponding rate in the COPD control subjects was 1.22 (95% CI 0.92-1.53) and in the asthma control subjects 0.38 (95% CI 0.22-0.54). The mean survival times for the bronchiectatic patients were 8.33 (95% CI 8.16-8.50), for the COPD control subjects 6.26 (95% CI 6.07-6.45) and for the asthma patients 8.93 (95% CI 8.76-9.10) years. Bronchiectasis-related hospitalization in Finland is primarily focused on aged people. A bronchiectatic patient has a higher risk of pneumonia and a worse prognosis than an asthmatic, while the situation is opposite when compared to a COPD patient.

Keywords: bronchiectasis, pneumonia, hospitalization, mortality, prognosis

Received: November 7, 2008; Revised: April 26, 2009; Accepted: April 26, 2009; Published: December 1, 2009  Show citation