In more than 40 percent of cases, children admitted to the emergency department for community-acquired pneumonia received treatment outside of standard guidelines, according to an AHRQ-supported article in Hospital Pediatrics. The authors studied 772 patients aged 2 to 17 and compared antibiotic prescribing with standards set by the 2011 Infectious Diseases Society of America consensus guidelines. These standards allow treatment without antibiotics where possible and encourage the use of narrow-spectrum antibiotics instead of broad-spectrum drugs when antibiotics are necessary, unless prior narrow-spectrum treatment has failed. In the study, patients with symptoms visible on chest radiographs and those with viral sample testing that was negative or inconclusive were more likely to receive antibiotics. Among those who received antibiotics, those whose upper chest pulled in during breathing—a symptom known as “chest indrawing”—had 2.22 times greater odds of receiving treatment within guidelines, and those with clinically significant fluid buildup had 0.21 times lower odds.
En résumé : https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40031991/