A multidisciplinary panel of experts put together by the American Thoracic Society and Infectious Diseases Society of America released updated recommendations for the management of adults with community-acquired pneumonia.
A shift toward personalized medicine in pneumonia management would involve refining the diagnostic categories to include viral pneumonia, bacterial pneumonia, and noninfectious respiratory disease.
Diagnosing coinfection in pneumonia can be challenging because of timing of the sample collection and false-negative results when the viruses replicate in the lower respiratory tract.
Microbiologic treatment failure was found to be independently associated with recurrent pneumonia or death among patients with bacterial pneumonia after clinical cure.
Inhaled amikacin adjunctive to standard-of-care intravenous antibiotic therapy was not associated with improvements in survival in mechanically ventilated patients with Gram-negative pneumonia.
Exposure to carbapenem and carboxypenicillin or ureidopenicillin during the week before onset of ventilator-associated pneumonia and the severity of disease with regard to respiratory and hematologic failures were independent risk factors for the occurrence of Stenotrophomonas maltophilia-related VAP.
