A systematic review and meta-analysis of the efficacy and safety of glucocorticoids in the treatment of severe pneumonia.

Objectives: To systematically evaluate the efficacy and superiority of glucocorticoids in the treatment of severe pneumonia.

Method: Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) on glucocorticoids in the treatment of severe pneumonia were retrieved from CNKI, CBM, China Science and Technology Journal Database (VIP), Wanfang Database, and PubMed as of January 1, 2017. The literature was independently and objectively screened, extracted, and evaluated by two researchers, and a meta-analysis of the extracted data was performed using Revman 5.3 software.

Results: Ten studies that met the inclusion criteria were included, with a cumulative total of 1120 cases. The meta-analysis results confirmed that the observation group was superior to the control group in terms of efficacy rate, temperature recovery time, cough relief time, rale disappearance time, and serum CRP level. There was no statistically significant difference in terms of the incidence of adverse reactions, mortality rate, and reinfection rate between the two groups.

Conclusions: Glucocorticoids showed an obvious clinical efficacy in patients with severe pneumonia. However, due to the small number of included studies and the ambiguity of numerous bias risk assessments, high-quality and large-sample RCTs are still needed to provide corroborating evidence.