Pneumonia: Everything we need to know
Pneumonia is the respiratory infection with the highest mortality rate worldwide, as in 2019 alone, 2.5 million deaths due to pneumonia were recorded, of which 672,000 were children. In Greece, approximately 100,000 cases of pneumonia are diagnosed each year. Of these, 30,000–40,000 patients require hospitalization and 5–10% are hospitalized in the ICU due to respiratory failure.
Pneumonia is a lung infection that causes inflammation in the air spaces called alveoli, where blood oxygenation occurs. When this happens, the alveoli fill with inflammatory material, i.e. pus, and as a result they cannot fill with air. In this way, the blood does not receive enough oxygen and therefore the vital organs, such as the heart, brain, kidneys, for example.
The first symptoms are shortness of breath, pleuritic pain, cough, purulent sputum, fever. The patient needs to visit a doctor, who detects pathological sounds on auscultation and the diagnosis is confirmed with a simple chest X-ray. In most cases and depending on the patient, the treatment consists of oral antibiotic treatment, with clinical and laboratory monitoring with blood tests and inflammation markers at regular intervals.
We must evaluate the course very carefully, as many complications lurk, which lead to clinical deterioration in the patient, resulting in admission to the hospital for intravenous treatment. Treatment of difficult complications, such as hypoxic respiratory failure, inflammatory pleural effusion, which require careful management with oxygen administration and drainage of pleural fluids, must also be taken into account when the patient does not present a smooth course with remission of his symptoms.
The causes of pneumonia are usually infectious, that is, microbes, the main of which is pneumococcus, viruses such as influenza type A and B, COVID-19, fungi, etc. Viruses cause pneumonias of a different morphology than microbes, called atypical.
In addition to treatment with antibiotic drugs, for which we must draw attention to the rational use, prevention must play a major role in our time, as we now know a lot of information about the transmissibility of pneumonia. Therefore, distancing from gatherings, removing people with compatible symptoms from workplaces, regular hand washing, vaccination for influenza and pneumococcus where indicated, and seeking early medical help should be self-evident.
World Pneumonia Day should raise awareness among us all in the direction of prevention and compliance with the prescribed measures on the one hand, but also among scientists in the direction of a scientific approach and treatment of lung infection on the other, so that incidents and deaths worldwide can be reduced in the years to come.
