What puts patients at risk of pleural infection?

Pleural infection is an infection of the space between a person’s lungs and the wall of their chest. It is a serious illness usually caused by pneumonia.

Project aims

The purpose of this study is to find out what puts people at risk of a pleural infection.

We will compare patients who are admitted to hospital with a pleural infection with those who are admitted to hospital with community-acquired pneumonia. Community-acquired pneumonia is pneumonia which a person has caught in a community setting rather than a hospital or nursing home.

We will look at:

• Other health problems a patient has
• Medications they take
• How frail they are
• Their lifestyle habits
• Their socioeconomic status

We will look at how these differ for patients with a pleural infection versus patients with pneumonia.

What we hope to achieve

From this study, we will identify specific factors that may put people at risk of developing a pleural infection versus community-acquired pneumonia.

This information could be used to:

• Develop a tool to score patients’ level of risk, to help predict which patients will develop a pleural infection
• Find ways to prevent pleural infection
• Develop personalised treatment dependent on patients’ level of risk