What is community-acquired pneumonia?

Community-acquired pneumonia is contracted in the community, outside the hospital. Some community-acuired pneumonias are very serious and required hospitalizaiton as part of treatment.

Diagnosis

How is community-acquired pneumonia diagnosed? In general, the symptoms that suggest pneumonia include fever, chills, and/or fatigue, possibly combined with respiratory symptoms such as cough, sputum production, pleurisy, and dyspnea. These symtpoms can also be present in acute bronchitis, sinusitis, and some other non-infectious diseases. In some cases, chest x-rays will confirm the diagnosis of pneumonia by showing an infiltrate, but x-rays may not be helpful in all cases.

Many patients with community-acquired pneumonia are treated as outpatients and do not require extensive diagnostic tests. The need for testing depends on the severity of the illness, the presence of coexisting illness, and age.

Treatment

How is community-acquired pneumonia treated? Several important changes in recent years have made the initial management of community-acquired pneumonia a greater challenge than ever. First of all, there is an expanding spectrum of pathogens, either newly identified or previously unrecognized. Also, the array of diagnostic testing procedures and specialized tests may still not give all the answers. For example, at this time some commercial microbiology testing systems are unreliable at best in detecting the suceptibility of S. pneumoniae to antimicrobial agents.