Exploring the impact of the prognostic nutritional index and novel inflammatory markers on the prognosis of patients with hypostatic pneumonia

Objective: This study explored the clinical utility of the prognostic nutritional index (PNI), neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR), and CALLY index for the prognostic evaluation of patients with hypostatic pneumonia. Patients and Methods: The clinical data from 200 patients with hypostatic pneumonia admitted to a single hospital between January 2020 and December 2023 were retrospectively analyzed. Patients were divided into two groups based on their survival status at 28 days post-admission: the good prognosis (n = 153) and poor prognosis (n = 47) groups. Data were analyzed and processed using SPSS 22.0. The PNI, NLR, and CALLY indices were calculated for both groups. The prognostic performance of the PNI, NLR, and CALLY index in patients with hypostatic pneumonia was assessed using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Results: The PNI and CALLY scores for patients with poor prognosis were lower than those with good prognosis, while the opposite was true for the NLR values ( P < 0.05). ROC curve analyses revealed that the respective area under the curve values for the NLR, PNI, CALLY index, and the combination of all three were 0.829, 0.794, 0.789, and 0.864. The combination of the NLR, PNI, and CALLY index provided superior predictive accuracy compared to the individual values. Conclusions: The NLR, PNI, and CALLY index all aid in the reliable prediction of outcomes in patients with hypostatic pneumonia, and the combination of the three provides the highest prognostic utility.