Clinical, economic, and humanistic burden of community acquired pneumonia in Europe: a systematic literature review

ABSTRACT

Background

Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is an infectious lung inflammation contracted outside the hospital. CAP is a leading cause of death among young children, elderly, and immunocompromised persons. Incidence can reach 14 cases/1,000 adults. Up to 50% of cases require inpatient hospitalization. Mortality is 0.7/1,000 cases or 4 million deaths per year. We sought to summarize multi-dimensional burden of CAP for selected European countries.

Methods

We conducted a systematic literature review of literature published from 2011 to 2021 whereby we sought information pertaining to the epidemiologic, clinical, economic, and humanistic burden of CAP. Findings were summarized descriptively.

Results

CAP incidence in Europe is variable, with the highest burden among those of advanced age and with chronic comorbidities. Etiology is primarily bacterial infection with Streptococcus pneumoniae being the most frequently implicated. Direct medical costs are primarily attributable to inpatient stay, which is exacerbated among high-risk populations. Higher mortality rates are associated with increasing age, the need for inpatient hospitalization, and antibiotic resistance.

Conclusions

A better understanding of CAP is needed, specifically the economic and quality of life burden on patients and caregivers. We recommend further assessments using population-level and real-world data employing consistent disease definitions.

KEYWORDS:

• Community acquired pneumonia
• disease burden
• Europe
• economic
• epidemiology
• quality of life

Declaration of interest

E Tsoumani, S Salomonsson, and G Bencina are employees of MSD. J Carter and J Stephens are employees of OPEN Health, which received funding from MSD to conduct this study. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have received an honorarium from Expert Review of Vaccines for their review work. One of these reviewers has disclosed that they provided scientific consultancies for protocol preparation and data analyses, for Pfizer, GSK, MSD. The remaining reviewers have no other relevant financial relationships or otherwise to disclose.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14760584.2023.2261785

Additional information

Funding

This paper was funded by Merck & Co.