Introduction:

those countries with a high level of population ageing show important associations to different diseases, for example, community acquired pneumonia and depression in elder people.

Objectives:

to establish the relationship of depression with mortality and to evaluate the effect of antidepressants in patients with community-acquired pneumonia admitted in the Intensive Care Unit of the Central Military Hospital “Dr. Carlos J. Finlay”.

Materials and methods:

a prospective, longitudinal, analytic study was carried out with all patients with community-acquired pneumonia, admitted in the Intensive Care Unit of the Central Military Hospital “Dr. Carlos J. Finlay” in the period from January 2018 until April 2019, who fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The universe were 160 patients.

Results:

there were 55 patients with depression symptoms before the admission. 78 % of the deceased showed depression at the admittance. The medium age of the non-depressed ones was 74 years; the highest age of the depressed ones was 80.80 years. 93 living patients did not present depression signs, and 43 presented them and died with a great statistical significance p: 0.000 RR: 6.8. A remarked relation was observed between mortality and not receiving treatment for depression (37) p 0,000.

Conclusions:

pneumonia and depression are diseases having a tight relationship. This association yields a high mortality, and the impact of the anti-depression treatment on the patient’s evolution is defining in the intensive care settings.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )