Epidemiology and Clinical Characteristics of Community-Acquired Pneumonia in Hospitalized Children

The precise epidemiology of childhood pneumonia remains poorly defined. Accurate and prompt etiologic diagnosis is limited by inadequate clinical, radiologic, and laboratory diagnostic methods. The objective of this study was to determine as precisely as possible the epidemiology and morbidity of community-acquired pneumonia in hospitalized children.

Consecutive immunocompetent children hospitalized with radiographically confirmed lower respiratory infections (LRIs) were evaluated prospectively from January 1999 through March 2000. Positive blood or pleural fluid cultures or pneumolysin-based polymerase chain reaction assays, viral direct fluorescent antibody tests, or viral, mycoplasmal, or chlamydial serologic tests were considered indicative of infection by those organisms. Methods for diagnosis of pneumococcal pneumonia among study subjects were published by us previously. Selected clinical characteristics, indices of inflammation (white blood cell and differential counts and procalcitonin values), and clinical outcome measures (time to defervescence and duration of oxygen supplementation and hospitalization) were compared among groups of children.