<p>Imaging and bronchoscopy findings.</p>

Our analysis revealed that patients with MPP were younger (37.00 years vs. 61.00 years), had procalcitonin levels mostly within the normal range, exhibited higher serum albumin levels (40.68 g/L vs. 36.34g/L), and higher levels of complement C1q (209.30 mg/L vs. 169.55 mg/L) compared to patients with bacterial pneumonia. In contrast, thrombin time was relatively prolonged in patients with bacterial pneumonia (14.00 s vs. 13.10 s).

Based on these findings, we developed a clinical prediction model with strong discriminatory performance for early differentiation between MPP and bacterial pneumonia with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.879 (95% CI, 0.833–0.925). Temporal validation demonstrated the model’s stability and good predictive performance (AUC: 0.922 vs. derivation 0.879).</p> <p>Conclusions</p><p>Our study showed that age, serum albumin, complement C1q level, thrombin time, and normal-range procalcitonin levels were highly predictive of MPP.

This study provides a predictive model for early differentiation between MPP and bacterial pneumonia to aid in timely clinical decision-making.</p></div>