Clinical outcome and prognostic factors associated with invasive pulmonary aspergillosis: An 11-year follow-up report from Taiwan.

BACKGROUND: Invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA) has high mortality rate but prognostic factors are not well established. The aim of our study was to evaluate the trend in in-hospital mortality over a period of 11 years and identify factors affecting the clinical outcomes of patients with IPA.

METHOD: We conducted a nationwide inpatient population study using data from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database. A total of 407 IPA patients from 2002 to 2012 were included in the study. Differences in demographics, comorbidities, and treatment were evaluated between in-hospital death group and survival group. Multivariate analysis was also performed to identify risk factors for mortality.

RESULT: Male patients represented 63.14% of the patients (n = 257) and the mean age was 53.15 ± 20.93 years. Hematological cancer (n = 216, 53.07%) and diabetes mellitus (n = 75, 18.43%) were the most common underlying conditions. The overall case fatality rate was 30.22% with female slightly higher then male (32.67% versus 28.79%). The in-hospital case fatality rate increased since 2002 and peaked in 2006. It then declined over time with an in-hospital mortality of 25% in 2012. The in-hospital death group had a higher intubation rate (p<0.0001), a longer ICU stay (p = 0.0062), higher percentages of DM (p = 0.0412) and COPD (p = 0.0178), and a lower percentage of hematological cancer (p = 0.0079) as compared to survivor. The in-hospital death group was more likely to have steroid treatment (p<0.0001), develop acute renal failure (p<0.0001) and other infectious diseases (p = 0.0008) during hospitalization. Multivariate analysis identified female gender, older age (≥ 65 years old), intubation, bone marrow transplantation, acute renal failure, other infectious diseases and steroid use as predictive factors for mortality.

CONCLUSION: The present study shows the trend in mortality among patients with IPA over an 11-year period. Female gender, older age, intubation, bone marrow transplantation, acute renal failure, other infectious diseases and steroid use were identified as risk factors for mortality.