CURB-65 Score Calculator

About this calculator

CURB-65 is a validated clinical scoring tool that estimates 30-day mortality risk in community-acquired pneumonia by counting five binary criteria, one point each: new mental Confusion, blood Urea nitrogen above 19 mg/dL (7 mmol/L), Respiratory rate ≥ 30/min, Blood pressure below 90 systolic or 60 diastolic, and age 65 or older — giving a total score from 0 to 5.

Emergency and internal medicine physicians use CURB-65, published by Lim et al. in 2003, to help decide whether a pneumonia patient can be safely treated as an outpatient (typically scores of 0–1), needs hospital admission (2), or should be considered for intensive or high-dependency care (3 or higher), alongside overall clinical judgment.

Hospitalists, emergency department staff, and medical students learning pneumonia severity assessment rely on this score as a quick, structured way to standardize triage decisions — it summarizes risk, but as with any clinical decision rule it supports rather than replaces a full clinical evaluation.