Characterising the impact of pneumonia on outcome in non-small cell lung cancer: identifying preventative strategies.

Background Infections remain a part of the natural course of cancer, and lung cancer patients often present with some form of respiratory infection that can lead to their ultimate demise. Methods Data was gathered concerning all unplanned hospital admissions (UHAs) to our centre from three separate patient cohorts; non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients (cohort 1), "other cancer" patients (breast, prostate, colon) (cohort 2) and all non-cancer patients (cohort 3). Results Across the three cohorts, there were 455, 1,190 and 54,158 individual patient UHAs to our centre respectively. Within the NSCLC cohort, 164 UHAs were as a direct result of pneumonia (36.0%), compared to 1.3% and 2.2% in the other two cohorts (P<0.0001). In-hospital mortality and length of hospital stay were significantly higher in the pneumonia sub-group of NSCLC patients only compared with the other two patient cohorts (P