[Acute respiratory distress syndrome: indigenous Legionnaires' disease (author's transl)]

The possibility of indigenous Legionnaires' disease should be known as suggested by the following case : a 69-year-old man, diabetic, having never travelled out of Poitou, suffers from serious pneumonia with dyspnea needing mechanical ventilation with positive end-expiratory pressure. After failure of ampicillin, the evolution seems favourable with cotrimoxazole. However the discontinuation of this last drug is followed by a relapse which is treated with success by erythromycin. Serodiagnoses will be positive for Legionella Pneumophila serogroup I. This case, typical by its clinical features, makes itself noticed by its epidemiology and the relapse under cotrimoxazole, proving that erythromycin remains the choice antibiotic for these infections.