Abstract
Background Stroke-associated pneumonia (SAP) is an important cause of poststroke morbidity and mortality. Several clinical risk scores predict the risk of SAP. In this study, we used the A 2 DS 2 score (age, atrial fibrillation, dysphagia, sex, and stroke severity) to assess the risk of SAP in patients admitted with acute stroke. Methods A high (510) and a low (04) A 2 DS 2 score was assigned to patients with acute stroke admitted to the neurology ward. Univariate binary logistic regression analysis was performed to find the strength of association of SAP and A 2 DS 2 score. Results There were 250 patients with acute stroke of which 46 developed SAP. Forty-four patients developed SAP in high score as against 2 in low-score group (odds ratio [OR] = 0.03, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.010.15, p = 0.0001). A 2 DS 2 score >5 had sensitivity of 82.6% and specificity of 65.1% to predict SAP. The mean A 2 DS 2 score in patients with pneumonia was 7.02 1.40 compared to 4.75 1.92 in patients without pneumonia ( p = 0.0001). Conclusions A 2 DS 2 score has a high sensitivity of 82% in predicting the risk of SAP and is a useful tool to monitor patients after acute stroke. A 2 DS 2 score can help in timely detection and prevention of SAP and reduction in caregivers burden.
Copyright
Association for Helping Neurosurgical Sick People. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Derivative-Non Commercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit.
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This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License, which permits unrestricted reproduction and distribution, for non-commercial purposes only; and use and reproduction, but not distribution, of adapted material for non-commercial purposes only, provided the original work is properly cited.
