ABSTRACT
(1) Background: Biomarker and model development can help physicians adjust the management of patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) by screening for inpatients with a low probability of cure early in their admission; (2) Methods: We conducted a 30-day cohort study of newly admitted adult CAP patients over 20 years of age. Prognosis models to predict the short-term prognosis were developed using random survival forest (RSF) method; (3) Results: A total of 247 adult CAP patients were studied and 208 (84.21%) of them reached clinical stability within 30 days. The soluble form of suppression of tumorigenicity-2 (sST2) was an independent predictor of clinical stability and the addition of sST2 to the prognosis model could improve the performance of the prognosis model. The C-index of the RSF model for predicting clinical stability was 0.8342 (95% CI, 0.8086-0.8598), which is higher than 0.7181 (95% CI, 0.6933-0.7429) of CURB 65 score, 0.8025 (95% CI, 0.7776-8274) of PSI score, and 0.8214 (95% CI, 0.8080-0.8348) of cox regression. In addition, the RSF model was associated with adverse clinical events during hospitalization, ICU admissions, and short-term mortality; (4) Conclusions: The RSF model by incorporating sST2 was more accurate than traditional methods in assessing the short-term prognosis of CAP patients.