Official publication of Rawalpindi Medical University
Comparison of CURB65 and CURBS-65 Scoring Systems for Predicting the Severity of Community-Acquired Pneumonia

How to Cite

1.
Khan MW, Yasmin R, Shahid K, Iqbal S, Ahmed S, Rani A. Comparison of CURB65 and CURBS-65 Scoring Systems for Predicting the Severity of Community-Acquired Pneumonia. JRMC [Internet]. 2026 Jun. 30 [cited 2026 Jun. 30];30(2). Available from: https://journalrmc.com/index.php/JRMC/article/view/3024

Abstract

Objective: To compare the CURB-65 and CURBS-65 scoring systems for predicting the severity of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP).

Methods: The study recruited 150 patients using consecutive sampling, following the inclusion criteria, with pneumonia in the medical wards of POF Hospital, Wah Cantt, Pakistan, from April 2024 to July 2024. The study’s inclusion criteria comprised patients above 18 years of age with a clinical diagnosis of CAP and who were admitted to medical wards, High Dependency Units (HDU), and ICU. All participants, including their guardians, gave written informed consent for the study usage or participation. All data were collected by the study author using a PACS system and by analysing patient data from hospital documents. Data analysis was done via SPSS 29. 

Results: The mean age of the patients was 65.72 years. Among them, 60 were women and 90 were men. The mean CURB-65 and CURBS-65 scores in males were 1.81 and 2.33, respectively, whereas in females, they were 1.57 and 2.13, respectively. The relationships between length of stay, age, assisted ventilation, mortality, CURB-65, and CURBS-65 were statistically significant. The ROC curve showed that CURB-65 revealed more reliable results than CURBS-65.

Conclusion: In the evaluation of mortality in CAP by CURB-65 and CURBS-65, CURB-65 had a higher sensitivity and overall predictive capability.

Keywords: Community-Acquired Pneumonia, CURB-65, CURBS-65, Mortality Prediction, Severity Scoring, ROC Curve

https://doi.org/10.37939/jrmc.v30i2.3024

References

Farooq M. Characteristics and outcome of adult patients with community-acquired pneumonia. Pak J Med Health Sci. 2021 Jul;15(7):1534–1536. https://doi.org/10.53350/pjmhs211571534

File TM Jr, Ramirez JA. Community-acquired pneumonia. O’Malley PG, editor. N Engl J Med. 2023 Aug 17;389(7):632–641. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMcp2303286

Bahçecioğlu SN, Köktürk N, Baha A, Yapar D, Aksakal FNB, Gunduz C, et al. A new scoring system to predict mortality in community-acquired pneumonia: CURB (S)-65. Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci. 2023 Jul;27(13):6293–6302. https://doi.org/10.26355/eurrev_202307_33000

Blanc E, Chaize G, Fievez S, Féger C, Herquelot E, Vainchtock A, et al. The impact of comorbidities and their stacking on short- and long-term prognosis of patients over 50 with community-acquired pneumonia. BMC Infect Dis. 2021 Dec 1;21(1):949. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12879-021-06669-5

Eldaboosy S, Almoosa Z, Saad M, Al Abdullah M, Farouk A, Awad A, et al. Comparison between physiological scores SIPF, CURB-65, and APACHE II as predictors of prognosis and mortality in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 pneumonia: a multicenter study, Saudi Arabia. Infect Drug Resist. 2022 Dec 14;15:7619–7630. https://doi.org/10.2147/IDR.S395095

Zhang X, Yang L, Wu J, Mei X. CAP-PIRO scoring system’s performance in predicting prognosis and severity of community-acquired pneumonia: a single-center prospective study. Infect Drug Resist. 2024 Nov 26;17:5335–5346. https://doi.org/10.2147/IDR.S497311

Gelaidan A. Comparative effectiveness of CURB-65 and qSOFA scores in predicting pneumonia outcomes: a systematic review. Med J Cairo Univ. 2024;92(1):125–133. https://doi.org/10.21608/mjcu.2024.341112

Lazar Neto F, Marino LO, Torres A. Community-acquired pneumonia severity assessment tools in patients hospitalized with COVID-19: a validation and clinical applicability study. Clin Microbiol Infect. 2021 Jul 1;27(7):1037.e1-1037.e8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmi.2021.03.003

Baker C. P1 Community acquired pneumonia (CAP) & the advent of virtual hospital wards: how useful is the CURB-65 criteria for risk stratification in 2022? Thorax. 2022 Dec;77(Suppl 1):A81. https://doi.org/10.1136/thorax-2022-BTSabstracts.137

Carlos P. CURB-65 and long-term mortality of community-acquired pneumonia: a retrospective study on hospitalized patients. J Clin Med. 2023;12(4):1582. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm12041582

Zaki HA. The battle of the pneumonia predictors: a comprehensive meta-analysis comparing the Pneumonia Severity Index (PSI) and the CURB-65 score in predicting mortality and the need for ICU support. Cureus. 2023 May 17;15(5):e39139. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.39139

Cetin EU. Advancing ICU mortality prediction in community-acquired pneumonia: combining fibrinogen-to-albumin ratio, CT severity score, PSI, and CURB-65. Biomol Biomed. 2025 Aug 5;25(9):2083–2091. https://doi.org/10.17305/bb.2025.12127

Piombi-Adanza SN.Analysis of oxygen blood saturation/ respiratory rate index, NEWS2, CURB65, and quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment scores to assess prognosis in patients with mild coronavirus disease 2019. Rev Invest Clin. 2021 Nov 5;73(6):399–407. https://doi.org/10.24875/RIC.21000282

Kaal AG. Outcomes of community-acquired pneumonia using the Pneumonia Severity Index versus the CURB-65 in routine practice of emergency departments. ERJ Open Res. 2023 May 2;9(3):00051-2023. https://doi.org/10.1183/23120541.00051-2023

Bradley J. Pneumonia Severity Index and CURB-65 score are good predictors of mortality in hospitalized patients with SARS-CoV-2 community-acquired pneumonia. Chest. 2022 Apr 1;161(4):927–936. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chest.2021.10.041

Wang D, Willis DR, Yih Y. The pneumonia severity index: Assessment and comparison to popular machine learning classifiers. International Journal of Medical Informatics. 2022 Jul 1;163:104778.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2022.104778

Limapichat T, Akman C. Comparison between the severity scoring systems A-DROP and CURB-65 for predicting safe discharge from the emergency department in patients with community-acquired pneumonia. Emerg Med Int. 2022 Apr 18;2022:1–8. https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/6391141

Ticona JH, Zaccone VM, McFarlane IM. Community-acquired pneumonia: A focused review. American journal of medical case reports. 2021;9(1):45. https://doi.org/10.12691/ajmcr-9-1-12.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Copyright (c) 2026 Muhammad Walleed Khan, Riffat Yasmin, Kanwal Shahid, Sumaira Iqbal, Sohaib Ahmed, Aysha Rani