ACDD(4) score: A simple tool for assessing risk of pneumonia after stroke

摘要

Background: Pneumonia is a serious but a preventable stroke complication. Prediction scales for post-stroke pneumonia have been proposed with an intent to improve surveillance and prevention but they remain under-utilized in clinical practice. Most existing scales were developed using both ventilated and non-ventilated patients which may affect their accuracy. We derived and validated a novel, pragmatic scale to predict hospital acquired pneumonia (HAP) after stroke employing only a non-ventilated stroke cohort.