Beschreibung:
<jats:sec><jats:title>Background</jats:title><jats:p>There is a paucity of UK data to aid healthcare professionals in predicting which patients hospitalised with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) are at greatest risk of 30-day readmission and to determine which readmissions may occur soonest.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Methods</jats:title><jats:p>An analysis of CAP cases admitted to nine UK hospitals participating in the Advancing Quality Pneumonia Programme.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Results</jats:title><jats:p>An analysis was performed of 12 157 subjects hospitalised with CAP in the Advancing Quality Programme Database. 26% of those discharged were readmitted within 30 days with readmission predicted by comorbidity including non-metastatic cancer, diabetes with complications and chronic kidney disease. 41% and 66% of readmissions occurred within 7 and 14 days of discharge, respectively. Patients readmitted within 14 days were more likely to have metastatic cancer (6.6% vs 4.5%; p=0.03) compared with those readmitted at 15–30 days.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Conclusions</jats:title><jats:p>A quarter of patients hospitalised for CAP are readmitted within 30 days; of those, two-thirds are readmitted within 2 weeks. Further research is required to determine whether such readmissions might be preventable through imple menting measures including in-hospital cross-specialty comorbidity management, convalescence in intermediate care, targeted rehabilitation and advanced care planning.</jats:p></jats:sec>