A clinical and radiological study of community acquired pneumonias in patients attending a tertiary care hospital, guntur

Introduction: Community Acquired pneumonia is an acute illness acquired in the community with symptoms suggestive of Lower Respiratory Tract Infection (LRTI). Together with presence of a chest radiograph of intrapulmonary shadowing, which is likely to be new and has no clear alternative cause. Pneumonia is one of the leading causes of death and morbidity, both in developing and developed countries and is the commonest cause (10%) of hospitalization in adult and children. This study is to understand the mode of presentation, its clinical features, bacteriological and radiological features for the early detection of community acquired pneumonia, the causative agent and to study its complications. This study also involves the impact of co morbid conditions on the prevalence of type of pneumonia, its severity and its outcome. Objective: The present study is undertaken to study the mode of presentation, its clinical features, bacteriological and radiological features for the early detection of the community acquired pneumonias and the associated co morbidities, its impact on outcome. Method: 100 cases admitted in wards and ICU in Department of General Medicine in Katuri Medical College and Hospital, Guntur. After recruitment for the study a thorough physical examination is done and routine investigations were carried out to make a diagnosis of Community Acquired Pneumonia (CAP) and the results are processed and compared with similar studies. Conclusion: All the findings of this study were compared to similar studies done at other centres in India and abroad and available literatures were reviewed. The age group in this study group varied from 27-80 years, most of them were between 30-65 years, predominantly middle and elderly age accounting for 96%. The incidence of CAP is most common in men (77%) compared to females (23%). The associated diseases in this study are COPD (35%) & DM (22.0%). The commonest presenting symptoms are cough (100%), expectoration (100%), and fever (60%) other symptoms include dyspnoea (45%), and chest pain (13%). The Sputum culture showed 23% streptococcal, 26% staphylococcus aureus, 9% pseudomonas, 13% Klebsiella, 16% normal comensols and 7% mixed, staphylococcus and klebsiella (5%), citrobacter(1%).