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Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), also known as community-acquired bacterial pneumonia (CABP), is an infection of the lungs that is acquired outside of the hospital setting. Lower respiratory infections including CAP are the leading cause of death from infectious disease in the world. In the US, there were 1.3 million emergency department visits and 49,157 deaths attributed to pneumonia in 2017. When combined with influenza, pneumonia was the eighth leading cause of death in the US. In the elderly, CAP has a higher burden of hospitalization and total cost than heart attack, stroke, and fractures combined. It is linked to 1.5 million hospitalizations in adults each year, with an estimated mortality rate of 6.5% during hospitalization.
In October of 2019, the American Thoracic Society, along with the Infectious Diseases Society of America, published an updated guideline on the diagnosis and treatment of adults with CAP. This guideline is the long-awaited update to the 2007 version published by the same groups. This update does not provide recommendations for managing foreign travelers or patients who are immunocompromised (eg, patients receiving cancer chemotherapy, bone marrow transplant recipients, HIV patients, etc). Notable changes to the guideline include the removal of the healthcare-associated pneumonia category, the use of empiric amoxicillin monotherapy for outpatients with no coexisting conditions (eg, chronic, lung, heart, liver, or kidney disease; diabetes, asplenia, malignancy, or alcoholism), and the use of macrolide monotherapy only if local resistance rates are less than 25%. This issue summarizes the causes, risk factors, and current treatment recommendations for CAP in adults. The 2019 guideline was released before the pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus(SARS CoV-2). The guideline and this issue do not include information on managing CAP in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).This program was developed by The Rx Consultant and published by Continuing Education Network, Inc. The Rx Consultant accepts no advertising or financial support from the pharmaceutical industry and is funded solely by the purchase of programs. The Rx Consultant is dedicated to providing unbiased, balanced information to health care practitioners.
Programs developed by The Rx Consultant are written by health care providers with expertise in the topic area, peer-reviewed, extensively edited, and fact-checked. This development process was created to insure that every program presents information that is current, accurate, relevant to "real world" health care providers, and written in an easy reading, "plain English" style.
The Rx Consultant is a publication of Continuing Education Network, Inc.
ACPE Universal Activity Number: 0428-0000-20-009-H01-P
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Chief Editor and CE AdministratorTerry M. Baker, PharmD
Managing EditorTracy Farnen, PharmD
Associate EditorsJames Chan, PharmD, PhD Pharmacy Quality and Outcomes Coordinator Kaiser Permanente Oakland, CA
Associate Clinical Professor
Richard Ron Finley, B.S. Pharm.,R.Ph.
Consultant Pharmacist
Consult Pharmacist Aging and Adult Health Services
Julio R. Lopez, PharmD, FCSHP
Adjunct Clinical Professor |
Assistant Clinical Professor
Visiting Associate Professor and Lecturer Pamela Mausner, MD
Helen Berlie, Pharm.D. CDE, BCACP
Ambulatory Care Specialist - Diabetes
Senior Editorial AdvisorGerard Hatheway, PharmD, PhD
Editorial AdvisorsBelinda M. Danielson, RPh Christopher M. DeSoto, PharmD Angie S. Graham, PharmD Cynthia Chan Huang, PharmD, MBA Fred Plageman, PharmD
Editorial Advisor and Clinical Practice Consultant for Nurse PractitionersEmily K. Meuleman, RN, C, MS |
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