Assessment
As discussed in part 1 of this unit, patients suffering from pneumonia may present in a variety of ways, ranging from the asymptomatic to the seriously symptomatic. It is important that practitioners are able to assess the severity of the pneumonia and its impact on patients’ physical condition.
The CURB-65 score is the most commonly used tool to identify patients who are sick or have the potential to become very unwell, possibly requiring admission to ICU (Kamath et al, 2006). It allocates a point for an abnormal finding in each of four main areas – mental state, blood urea levels, respiratory rate and blood pressure, and gives a score for age. It is summarised as follows: