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• Will it change your management?
  Matthew Babirecki
  Published on: 27 April 2007

• Published on: 27 April 2007

  Will it change your management?

  • Matthew Babirecki, Locum consultant paediatrician

  Dear Editor,

  As a paediatrician I have learnt that auscultation often adds little to my assessment of children with possible pneumonia. If the patient (adult or child) has other clinical features of pneumonia e.g hypoxia, pleuritic pain, tachypnoea, then a chest radiograph will probably be requested anyway.

  Interestingly the British Thoracic Society guidelines on Community Aquired Pneumonia in Adult...

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  Dear Editor,

  As a paediatrician I have learnt that auscultation often adds little to my assessment of children with possible pneumonia. If the patient (adult or child) has other clinical features of pneumonia e.g hypoxia, pleuritic pain, tachypnoea, then a chest radiograph will probably be requested anyway.

  Interestingly the British Thoracic Society guidelines on Community Aquired Pneumonia in Adults (Thorax 2001;56 (suppl IV)) state that a chest radiograph is not indicated for the majority of patients diagnosed with pneumonia in the community but also state that "diagnosing pneumonia clinically without a chest radiograph is inaccurate".

  So do you perform a chest radiograph or do you give antibiotics - whether they have crepitations or not?

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  Conflict of Interest:
  None declared.

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