Prognostic Significance of HALP Score in Patients Who Develop Pneumonia After Kidney Transplant.

Abstract

Objectives: Infections, especially pneumonia, are among the significant causes of morbidity and mortality in transplant recipients. Pneumonia leads to a complex clinical circumstance, related not only to the infection itself but also to underlying immunosuppression, concomitant diseases, and organ dysfunction. Here, we evaluated the effect of the immunonutritional /inflammatory biomarker known as the HALP score (calculated from hemoglobin, albumin, lymphocytes, and platelets ) on prognosis in patients who developed pneumonia after kidney transplant.

Materials and methods: We retrospectively reviewed files of kidney transplant recipients treated at our hospital's chest diseases outpatient clinic between April 2020 and April 2025 to discover patients who had been diagnosed with pneumonia on thoracic computed tomography scans. We exported data (age, sex, laboratory tests at diagnosis, length of hospital stay, and mortality rates ) to a database spreadsheet file (Excel, Microsoft ) and compared HALP scores of patients who died versus survived. We analyzed disease severity according to the Pneumonia Severity Index and the CURB -65 (calculated from confusion, uremia, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and age ≥65 years ) scores.

Results: Among 178 included patients (100 female, 78 male ), 148 (83.1 %) survived and 30 (16.9 % ) died. Patients who died had HALP scores lower than patients who survived. Patients with higher Pneumonia Severity Index scores had significantly lower HALP scores.

Conclusions: The HALP score is a biomarker based on easily calculable, low -cost, and accessible parameters and may be a potential tool to evaluate prognosis in the general patient population. Prospective and multicenter studies with larger sample groups are needed to better evaluate the role of the HALP score for prognosis determination related to infections in kidney transplant recipients.