title: Clinical response to antibiotic therapy for community-acquired pneumonia.
abstract: Childhood community-acquired pneumonia is a common and potentially serious problem worldwide. Unless the patient has bacteraemia or pleural empyema, aetiological diagnostics are limited and antibiotic treatment is empirical. Published data on expected response to therapy are scarce. To determine the clinical response to antibiotic treatment in a developed country in otherwise healthy children with community-acquired pneumonia, we conducted a prospective study of 153 hospitalised children with pneumonia. The role of 17 microbes as potential causative agents was evaluated. The duration of fever (>37.5 degrees C) and hospitalisation were studied as objective measures of recovery. A potential aetiology was found in 83% of 153 patients: 29% of the patients had sole viral and 26% sole bacterial and 29% mixed viral-bacterial infections. The median duration of fever after the onset of antibiotic treatment (mainly penicillin G) was 14 h and the median duration of hospitalisation was 48 h. Patients with mixed viral-bacterial infection became afebrile more slowly than those with either sole viral or sole bacterial infections.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  the findings indicate that in a developed country, children with pneumonia make a rapid, uneventful recovery needing only a short hospital stay. Expensive and time-consuming microbiological investigations are not required once bacterial sepsis has been excluded.
authors.affiliation: Department of Paediatrics, Turku University Hospital, PL 52, 20521, Turku, Finland.
authors.forename: Taina
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Juvén
authors.forename: Jussi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mertsola
authors.forename: Matti
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Waris
authors.forename: Maija
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Leinonen
authors.forename: Olli
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Ruuskanen
mesh_terms: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D017714:Community-Acquired Infections / Q000188:drug therapy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D018410:Pneumonia, Bacterial / Q000188:drug therapy*; D011024:Pneumonia, Viral / Q000188:drug therapy*; D011446:Prospective Studies; D018357:Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infections / Q000188:drug therapy; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D016896:Treatment Outcome
chemical_list: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents