Impact of vaccination with pneumococcal vaccines on recurrent pneumonia in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Background. Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are among the main causes of mortality worldwide, and, in addition, they also lead to great economic losses for the health system of all countries. Currently, there is an increase in cases of recurrent pneumonia, both in the general population and, in particular, in patients with COPD. One of the most important risk factors for the development of pneumonia is the previous episode of CAP. Potential risk factors for recurrent pneumonia are concomitant diseases such as heart failure, COPD, diabetes mellitus, neurological disorders, swallowing dysfunction, immune deficiency.Aim. To conduct a retrospective analysis of the effect of vaccine prophylaxis with conjugated pneumococcal vaccine (PCV13) and polysaccharide pneumococcal vaccine (PPV23) on the risk of recurrent pneumonia in patients with COPD.Materials and methods. A total of 302 male patients were included in the retrospective study. When analyzing the data, the fact of the development of pneumonia of any etiology during the 5th observation period was taken into account. For the recurrence of pneumonia, more than two episodes of CAP were taken during the year. 13-valent conjugated pneumococcal vaccine Prevenar-13 and 23-valent polysaccharide vaccine Pneumo23 were used for vaccine prophylaxis. The relative risk of the event was calculated. A 95% confidence interval was used.Results and conclusion. A retrospective analysis showed that, firstly, CAP is a fairly frequent complication of COPD: initially, the average percentage of cases of CAP was 19.3%. Secondly, the risk of developing repeated episodes of pneumonia remains quite high in unvaccinated patients and tends to increase within 5 years: from 17 to 22%. Thirdly, the pneumococcal vaccines used have different effects on the risk of recurrent pneumonia in patients with COPD, a significant decrease in the number of recurrent pneumonia is observed only with the use of conjugated vaccines.