What Are The Treatment Options For Double Pneumonia
Pneumonia in two lungs is treated the same way as it is in one lung.
The treatment plan will depend on the cause and severity of the infection, and your age and general health. Your treatment may include over-the-counter drugs to relieve pain and fever. These could include:
- aspirin
- ibuprofen
- acetaminophen
Your doctor may also suggest a cough medicine to help manage your cough so that you can rest. According to Mayo Clinic, coughing helps move fluid from your lungs, so you dont want to eliminate it entirely.
You can help yourself have a smoother recovery. Take your prescribed medication, rest, drink plenty of fluids, and dont push yourself to get back to your regular activities too soon.
Specific treatments for different types of pneumonia include:
Limit Contact With Others
One of the best things you can do when recovering from pneumonia is to limit your contact with others. As weve learned throughout the COVID-19 pandemicwhich can cause viral pneumoniastaying at least six feet away from others reduces the amount of viral or bacterial content they are exposed to as you breathe or talk.
Overall Demographic And Clinical Characteristics
In total, 4222 patients with pneumonia and septic shock were included in the analysis . The mean age of patients was 62 years. Sixty-three percent had positive cultures from clinical isolates, 21% had concomitant bacteremia, and 35% had nosocomial infections. Of patients with positive cultures, the most common pathogens were Staphylococcus aureus , Streptococcus spp. , Pseudomonas spp. , Escherichia coli , Klebsiella spp. , and Haemophilus influenzae . Mean APACHE II score was 26 , and serum lactate was 4.1 mmol/L at onset of septic shock. During ICU admission, 89% required mechanical ventilation. Of 3048 patients who received appropriate antimicrobial therapy after the development of septic shock, the mean time to administration of antimicrobials was 10.9 h . Fifty-one percent of patients died in hospital.
Table 1 Demographic and clinical characteristics of pneumonia-associated septic shock patients
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How Many People In The Uk Develop Pneumonia Each Year
In 2012, 345 people for every 100,000 had one or more episodes of pneumonia, down from 307 per 100,000 in 2004. In 2009, this rose to 409 people for every 100,000 due to a global flu pandemic. Around 220,000 people receive a diagnosis of pneumonia each year. Some individuals receive more than one diagnosis within a year, but we have focused on the number of individuals who received a diagnosis, rather than the number of cases.
Number of people per 100,000 who developed pneumonia 200412
Drug Trial To Treat Newly Discovered Targets In Covid
As a result of the detailed analysis, researchers identified critical targets to treat severe SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia and lessen its damage. The targets are the immune cells: macrophages and T cells. The study suggests macrophages cells typically charged with protecting the lung can be infected by SARS-CoV-2 and can contribute to spreading the infection through the lung.
Northwestern Medicine will test an experimental drug to treat these targets in COVID-19 pneumonia patients in a clinical trial early in 2021. The drug to be tested quiets the inflammatory response of these immune cells, thus enabling initiation of the repair process in the injured lung.
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Pneumonia Risk Factors For People Aged 70 And Older
The risk factors for developing pneumonia in people aged 70 and older are similar to the risk factors that lead to pneumonia in children.
Outdoor air pollution small particulate matter air pollution is the risk factor that lead to most deaths. In 2017 it lead to more than 300,000 deaths from pneumonia of older people.
Smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke have contributed to 150,000 and 73,000 deaths from pneumonia in this age group, respectively.
Are There Treatments For Covid
Pneumonia may need treatment in a hospital with oxygen, a ventilator to help you breathe, and intravenous fluids to prevent dehydration.
Clinical trials are looking into whether some drugs and treatments used for other conditions might treat severe COVID-19 or related pneumonia, including dexamethasone, a corticosteroid.
The FDA has approved the antiviral remdesivir for treatment of patients hospitalized with COVID. The drug was origininally developed to treat the Ebola virus.
The agency rescinded an emergency use authorization for the anti-malarials chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine amid serious concerns about their safety and how well they worked against the virus.
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Things You Should Know About Pneumonia
- By Stephanie Watson, Executive Editor, Harvard Women’s Health Watch
Pneumonia is an infection that causes the air sacs in the lungs to fill up with fluid or pus, which makes it harder to breathe. The most common symptoms are cough that may be dry or produce phlegm, fever, chills and fatigue. Other symptoms may include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and pain in the chest. and shortness of breath. Signs that indicate a more severe infection are shortness of breath, confusion, decreased urination and lightheadedness. In the U.S., pneumonia accounts for 1.3 visits to the Emergency Department, and 50,000 deaths annually.
With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to affect people around the world, pneumonia has become an even larger health concern. Some people infected with the COVID-19 have no symptoms, while others may experience fever, body ache, dry cough, fatigue, chills, headache, sore throat, loss of appetite, and loss of smell.
The more severe symptoms of COV-19, such as high fever, severe cough, and shortness of breath, usually mean significant lung involvement. The lungs can be damaged by overwhelming COVID-19 viral infection, severe inflammation, and/or a secondary bacterial pneumonia. COVID-19 can lead to long lasting lung damage.
Here are other important facts you should know about pneumonia:,
My Patient Is 93 And Has Pneumonia It’s Time To Talk About Her Death
Doctors dont like to lose but she tells me she is ready to go. Now its important to maintain her comfort and dignity
Mrs S is 93 years old and has severe pneumonia. She is sitting up in bed, with a big unwieldy mask strapped to her nose and mouth like a facehugger from Alien. This device is all that keeps her from lapsing into a coma. I sit at her bedside. We have just met. I am here to talk to her about her death.
As the medical registrar for a big hospital, I am often called in to help by other specialties when trouble arrives. Some days, by the time Im summoned, trouble has already got its feet under the table. On rare days, I really am there to save lives. Other days, I feel like the grim reaper, stalking the halls like death in a pencil skirt.
As our knowledge continues to advance, and the menu of available treatments continues to expand, we can do more and more to keep people alive. But every day in hospitals up and down the country, the debate continues to rage as to what we should do. Its a discussion that sounds like it should have a simple answer. Patients want to live families want to do their best for their loved ones doctors dont like to lose and its easy to default to a Do everything that you can mindset.
The procedure went well, but in the days and weeks that followed, Mrs L became more and more tired. Her pain grew worse. She slept more and showed no interest in food. What she wanted, she confided in us, one morning, was to die.
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Number Of People Dying From Pneumonia By Age
In the visualization here we see the global number of deaths from pneumonia3 by age group.
15% of all child deaths in 2017 were caused by pneumonia and it is therefore the leading cause of death of children .
The number of children dying from pneumonia has decreased substantially over the past three decades. In 1990, more than two million children died from pneumonia every year. By 2017, this number had fallen by almost two-thirds.
Improvements in the major risk factors such as childhood wasting, air pollution, and poor sanitation, falling global poverty, and a better availability of health technology such as pneumococcal vaccines and antibiotics have all contributed to this decline.
While the death rate for old people fell slightly, the number of deaths of people who are 70 years and older increased. 1.13 million, who died from pneumonia where in this age group. This is because the number of people who reached the age of 70 increased very strongly globally as we show in our entry on the changing global age structure.
Complications Associated With Pneumonia
The main complications related to community-acquired pneumonia include:
The accumulation of fluid between the tissues lining the lungs and chest cavity , which can affect 3666% of patients with CAP.
The body presents an excessive inflammatory response to a microorganism. Severe CAP can be complicated by sepsis and severe respiratory failure.
Cavitary lung lesions . These are very rare most cases require prolonged antibiotic treatment, while others are treated by means of surgical drainage.
Necrotising pneumonia is characterised by multiple, small lung cavities with evidence of consolidation. It is a rare complication of CAP in adults and is associated with pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pyogenes, Nocardia spp, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Streptococcus pneumoniae.
Smoking, alcohol, diabetes, chronic lung diseases or liver disease are all risk factors associated with necrotising pneumonia.
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Examining The Implications On Cap
Dr. Metersky says the findings from his study teams analysis were somewhat surprising when they are considered in the context of results from prior studies investigating mortality from pneumonia. Previous research has suggested that functional status is the most important predictor of mortality after discharge in patients with CAP. Other studies have identified several factors that discriminated between early and late in-hospital mortality. Conversely, some investigations have suggested that the cause of death among patients with CAP within 30 days of admission was directly related to pneumonia, but deaths between 30 and 90 days were unrelated to the pneumonia. Since earlier and later mortality often have different causes, the implication is that different risk factors might be identifiable.
What Is Covid Pneumonia
Dr. Lee: Pneumonia occurs when a bacterial or viral infection causes significant damage and inflammation in the lungs. The resulting fluid and debris build-up makes it hard for a person to breathe sometimes to such an extent that oxygen therapy or ventilator support is required. Regardless of the bacteria or virus causing it, pneumonia can become very serious, even life-threatening.
In the case of COVID pneumonia, the damage to the lungs is caused by the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
When COVID pneumonia develops, it causes additional symptoms, such as:
- Shortness of breath
- Increased heart rate
- Low blood pressure
What’s more is that COVID pneumonia often occurs in both lungs, rather than just one lung or the other. Additionally, the widespread inflammation that occurs in some people with COVID-19 can lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome a severe type of lung failure.
Like other respiratory infections that cause pneumonia, COVID-19 can cause short-term lung damage. In more severe cases, the damage can last a long time. In fact, early data is showing that up to a third of COVID pneumonia patients have evidence of scarring on X-rays or lung testing a year after the infection.
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Pneumonia Kills More Children Than Any Other Infectious Disease
Many people associate pneumonia with the elderly, but it is actually the biggest infectious killer of children worldwide. It claims the lives of over 800,000 children under five every year, including over 153,000 newborns, who are particularly vulnerable to infection. That means a child dies from pneumonia every 39 seconds and almost all of these deaths are preventable.
A child dies from pneumonia every 39 seconds. Almost all of these deaths are preventable
What causes pneumonia?
Pneumonia is an acute respiratory infection of the lungs. It doesnt have one single cause it can develop from either bacteria, viruses or fungi in the air. When a child is infected, his lungs are filled with fluid and it becomes difficult to breathe. Children whose immune systems are immature or weakened such as by undernourishment, or diseases like HIV are more vulnerable to pneumonia.
What are the symptoms of pneumonia?
As pneumonia is an infection of the lungs, the most common symptoms are coughing, trouble breathing and fever. Children with pneumonia usually experience fast breathing, or their lower chest may draw in or retract when they inhale .
Is pneumonia contagious?
Pneumonia is contagious and can be spread through airborne particles . It can also be spread through other fluids, like blood during childbirth, or from contaminated surfaces.
How is pneumonia diagnosed in children?
What is the treatment for pneumonia?
Can pneumonia be prevented?
Is there a pneumonia vaccine?
How Can We Reduce The Number Of People Dying From Pneumonia
When we understand what risks can lead to pneumonia, we can find ways to reduce them. Furthermore, because a number of risks factors for pneumonia overlap with risk factors for other diseases, especially diarrheal diseases, interventions that target pneumonia have the additional benefit of helping to limit other diseases and saving more lives.
Vaccines against pneumonia
There are several versions of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine , which target different serotypes of S. pneumoniae the bacterium responsible for most cases of pneumonia.
The PCV vaccine is given to children younger than 24 months. According to a study by Cheryl Cohen et al. , PVC13 the currently recommended PCV vaccine version has 85% effectiveness against invasive infections caused by the specific strains the pneumococcal strainsincluded in the vaccine formulation.13
It has been estimated that if PCV13 coverage in low income countries would reach the coverage of the DTP3 vaccine, then PCV13 could prevent 399,000 child deaths and 54.6 million pneumonia episodes annually when compared with a world in which no pneumococcal vaccination was available.14 India which has the highest number of child deaths from pneumonia only introduced PCV13 in 2017 and the coverage is still very low clearly the pneumococcal vaccine still has a lot of potential.15
Another vaccine widely used to protect children against both pneumonia is the Hib vaccine.
Promoting breastfeeding
Reducing air pollution
Oxygen therapy
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Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome
As COVID-19 pneumonia progresses, more of the air sacs become filled with fluid leaking from the tiny blood vessels in the lungs. Eventually, shortness of breath sets in, and can lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome , a form of lung failure. Patients with ARDS are often unable to breath on their own and may require ventilator support to help circulate oxygen in the body.
Whether it occurs at home or at the hospital, ARDS can be fatal. People who survive ARDS and recover from COVID-19 may have lasting pulmonary scarring.
A Study Explains Why Covid
Compared to traditional forms of pneumonia, pneumonia from the novel coronavirus develops over a longer period of time and lasts longer, according to a study in Nature. Researchers from Northwestern University School of Medicine compared lung cell samples from more than 85 hospitalized patients with COVID-19 pneumonia to more than 200 hospitalized patients with pneumonia from other sources. Combining these results with foundational studies, they believe SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen that causes COVID-19, burrows deep in the lungs of people who develop severe respiratory infections from the virus. Once there, SARS-CoV-2 appears to take over immune function. White blood cells and immune helpers that rush to infection sites to coordinate recovery appear to instead ferry SARS-CoV-2 to neighboring lung cells. The researchers believe this altered immune response explains why COVID-19 pneumonia takes longer to develop and extends hospital stays. In this study, the average length between a patient feeling sick from COVID-19 and requiring breathing support was 6-12 days. For people with similar complications from the flu, the range was 1-3 days or shorter.
To accelerate recovery from severe COVID-19 lung infections, the researchers will test treatment to restore immune function. The research was supported by the NHLBI.
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What Causes Pneumonia
Pneumonia is usually the result of a bacterial infection.
As well as bacterial pneumonia, other types include:
- viral pneumonia caused by a virus, such as coronavirus
- aspiration pneumonia caused by breathing in vomit, a foreign object, such as a peanut, or a harmful substance, such as smoke or a chemical
- fungal pneumonia rare in the UK and more likely to affect people with a weakened immune system
- hospital-acquired pneumonia pneumonia that develops in hospital while being treated for another condition or having an operation people in intensive care on breathing machines are particularly at risk of developing ventilator-associated pneumonia
When To Call A Doctor
If you have trouble breathing or severe chest pain, see a doctor as soon as possible, or go to the emergency room.
Pneumonia symptoms often resemble those of the flu or a cold. But if your symptoms are severe or last for more than three days, see a doctor. Untreated pneumonia can do permanent damage to your lungs.
According to Dr. Wayne Tsuang, a lung specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, whether you get pneumonia in one lung or both lungs is largely due to chance. This is the case whether the infection is viral, bacterial, or fungal.
In general, certain populations have a higher risk of getting pneumonia:
- infants and toddlers
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Adjustments On The Treatment Of Cancer Patients With Pneumonia
- Date:
- D’Or Institute for Research and Education
- Summary:
- Pneumonia is the most frequent type of infection in cancer patients and it is associated with high mortality rates. Researchers have analyzed the factors associated with severe pneumonia in hospitalized cancer patients and suggest that personalized treatment protocols can reduce mortality in this population. Their work indicates that the standard broad-spectrum antibiotic treatment used by physicians worldwide may not be the better choice for this group.
Cancer patients are more likely to get infections. Pneumonia is the most frequent type of infection in this group and a frequent cause of ICU admission and mortality. A study conducted by researchers from the D’Or Institute for Research and Education in partnership with Brazilian hospitals and universities analyzed the factors associated with severe pneumonia in hospitalized cancer patients and suggests that more personalized treatment protocols can reduce mortality in these patients.
Until now, there was a consensus among the medical community that the majority of pneumonia cases in cancer patients were due to the immune system debility caused by the disease and to the exposure to multiresistant bacteria which can cause the pulmonary infection. The idea was that these patients are more vulnerable to superbacteria because they spend a lot of time in hospitals.
New protocols
More efficient treatment
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