Pneumo Rischio

Calculate your potential risk of contracting invasive pneumococcal disease

The contents of this application have been developed by the Department of Health Sciences of the University of Florence and the Department of Health Sciences, University of Genoa.

The objective of the App

This application is easy to use and with a few clicks you can:

- Calculate the potential risk of contracting an invasive pneumococcal disease (eg. Pneumonia, bacteraemia, meningitis and sepsis)

- Raise awareness of the risk of pneumococcal disease

- Stimulate people to seek further information from your referring physician regarding pneumococcal disease and their prevention.

Who is at risk of invasive pneumococcal disease

All people are at risk of getting sick. However some groups of people are more at risk than others. These groups are: young children, adults aged 65 and older, people with chronic diseases such as cardiovascular, respiratory, kidney, liver, diabetes etc. Moreover, they are very high risk people with diseases or conditions that weaken the immune system (eg. Malignancies, HIV / AIDS, prolonged intake of certain drugs such as immunosuppressants and cortisone).

Pneumococcal disease

The pneumococcus is a very common bacterium pathogenic for humans. It is transmitted from sick or healthy carriers, usually through the air with saliva droplets emitted, for example, by coughing or sneezing. The bacterium can cause various diseases, which can be divided into non-invasive (eg. Pneumonia, ear infections, sinusitis, conjunctivitis) and invasive. There is talk of pneumococcal invasive disease when enters sterile sites such as blood or cerebrospinal fluid causing very serious diseases such as pneumonia, bacteraemia, meningitis and sepsis. These diseases can sometimes be fatal: in fact, every year in the world pneumococcus causes about 1.6 million deaths.

Is calculated as the risk

Risk factors were identified using the guidelines Italian and international. The estimated risk of the individual diseases was obtained by rigorous scientific data. For each disease is calculated the increased risk compared to people without the disease and is displayed on a color scale (yellow = low risk, medium risk = orange; red = high risk). The risk level has been calculated based on studies performed on non-vaccinated against pneumococcus.