Clinical and bacteriological profile of community acquired pneumonia in hospitalized children

Abstract

Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity with important clinical impact across the World. India accounts for 23 per cent of global pneumonia burden with case fatality rates between 14 and 30 per cent. Pneumonia is basically classified into typical and atypical pneumonia. Emerging evidence indicates that dual typical and atypical bacterial infections function synergistically in many cases and together likely enhance the severity of CAP. However, the optimal management of CAP in children is still not well defined and the diagnosis is challenging when based solely on clinical observations since the common symptoms of CAP, especially at an early stage, are similar to those of ordinary respiratory tract infections. So RT-PCR is a rapid and precise molecular technique is used for rapid detection of bacteria causing community acquired pneumonia. A total of 268 samples were tested for the respective bacterial pathogens, among the tested the most common pathogen was Haemophilus influenzae (18.3%, 49/268) followed by S. pneumoniae (14.6%,39/268), M. catarhallis (9.3%,25/268),M. pneumoniae (9%, 24/268), B. parapertusis (3.4%,9/268), B. pertusis (1.5%, 4/268), C. pneumoniae (1.5%, 4/268), C. burnetti (1.1%, 3/268)and L. pneumophila (0.74%, 2/268). H. influenza and S. pneumoniae were the most commonly detected organisms among the community acquired pneumonia patients.