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18-02-2020 | Ankylosing spondylitis | News

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‘Reassuring’ findings on pneumonia outcomes in patients with ankylosing spondylitis

Author: Claire Barnard

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medwireNews: Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is not associated with elevated rates of mortality, complications, or readmission among patients hospitalized with pneumonia, researchers report.

Despite the known increased risk for overall mortality and respiratory infections associated with AS, these “reassuring” findings indicate that “current management of pneumonia in patients with ankylosing spondylitis appears appropriate,” Mette Holland-Fischer (Aalborg University Hospital, Denmark) and co-researchers write in RMD Open.

In their analysis of 387,796 patients who were hospitalized for pneumonia in Denmark between 1997 and 2017, the team found that overall 90-day mortality rates were 12.5% for the 842 patients with AS and 15.5% for the 386,954 without AS, giving a nonsignificant hazard ratio of 0.95 after adjustment for sex, age, and comorbidities.

Patients with AS also had similar rates of hospital readmission within 90 days of discharge as those without (27.3 vs 25.4%) and comparable rates of pulmonary complications (1.9 vs 2.0%).

When the 2 decades were analyzed separately, people with AS had numerically higher rates of pulmonary complications than those without in 1997–2006 (2.9 vs 1.6%), but not in 2007–2017 (1.4 vs 2.2%), suggesting “an initially elevated risk for pulmonary complications in patients with ankylosing spondylitis [that] decreased over time,” say the study authors.

medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare. © 2020 Springer Healthcare part of the Springer Nature group

RMD Open 2020; 6: e001140

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