CE: Community-Acquired Pneumonia: A Review of Current Diagnostic Criteria and Management

Among the most common causes of U.S. adult hospitalizations, pneumonia accounted for nearly 50,000 deaths in the United States in 2017. This article provides nurses with a thorough update on pneumonia risk factors, signs and symptoms, and diagnostic criteria, as well as inpatient treatment recommendations and recommendations for discharge and prevention, including the nurse's role in patient and family teaching. The article also details key similarities and differences between the new 2019 guideline jointly developed by the American Thoracic Society and the Infectious Diseases Society of America on diagnosis and treatment of adults with community-acquired pneumonia and their earlier 2007 guideline. One crucial difference is the growing recognition that the etiology of pneumonia is changing, necessitating the abandonment of prior categorizations of pneumonia type when determining antibiotic coverage in favor of reliance on local epidemiology and validated risk factors for antimicrobial resistance.