A patient with a severe burn may experience reactivation of Herpes simplex virus, sometimes causing a pneumonia.
Patient selection: severe burn
Mechanism: probably transient immunosuppression
Risk factors for HSV pneumonia from multivariate analysis:
(1) female sex (OR 0.27 for male)
(2) higher SOFA score on admission (OR 1.5)
Factors associated with reduced risk of HSV pneumonia:
(1) smoke inhalation (OR 0.3 with smoke inhalation)
A SOFA score on admission > 4 had an area of under the ROC curve of 0.76 for HSV reactivation.
Septic shock was associated with 90-day mortality while HSV reactivation was not.
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Specialty: Infectious Diseases
