Pneumonia or pneumonia is a very complex and dangerous infectious disease. It's hard to believe, but even today, when medicine seems to be able to cure anything, humans continue to die from this disease. Community-acquired pneumonia is one of the varieties of the disease that requires urgent and intensive treatment.
Causes and symptoms of community-acquired pneumonia
Everyone knows that the main cause of pneumonia (regardless of the form of the disease) is harmful viruses and bacteria. These microorganisms are characterized by vitality and the ability to adapt to different living conditions. Viruses can easily live even in the human body, but at the same time not manifest themselves. The danger they represent only when the immune system for whatever reasons can no longer prevent their growth and reproduction.
Community-acquired pneumonia is one of the types of pneumonia that the patient picks up outside the hospital. That is, the main difference of the disease is in the environment, where the infection has started to develop, its causing. In addition to out-of-hospital, there are other forms of pneumonia:
- Nosocominal pneumonia is diagnosed if the symptoms of pneumonia in the patient manifest only after hospitalization (after two or more days).
- Aspiration pneumonia - a disease that occurs as a result of penetration into the lungs of foreign substances (chemicals, food particles and others).
- Another type of disease, very similar to community-acquired left- or right-sided pneumonia, is pneumonia in patients with immune system defects.
The main symptoms of different forms of pneumonia with each other practically do not differ and look like this:
- heat;
- cough, difficult to treat;
- fever;
- pain in the chest;
- increased fatigue;
- sweating;
- pallor;
- wheezing in the lungs .
Treatment of community-acquired pneumonia
Diagnosis of the inflammation of the lungs is most likely helped by radiographic examination. The picture clearly shows the darkened infected areas of the lungs.
The principle of treatment of community-acquired pneumonia, whether it is a polysergmentary bilateral or a right-sided lower-lobe form of it, consists in the destruction of the infection that caused the disease. As practice has shown, the strongest drugs, antibiotics, are the best to cope with this task. It is necessary to be ready and to the fact that during the treatment is mandatory hospitalization.
The medication course for each patient is selected individually. Unfortunately, the first time to reliably identify the virus that caused pneumonia is very difficult. Therefore, the appointment of a suitable antibiotic from the first time is quite difficult.
The list of the most effective drugs for the treatment of pneumonia is quite large and includes such medicines:
- Azithromycin;
- Erythromycin;
- Ceftriaxone;
- Spiromycin;
- Rifampicin;
- Ampicillin;
- Amoxicillin ;
- Cefaclor;
- Tetracycline;
- Ofloxacin and many others.
Antibiotics for the treatment of one- or two-sided community-acquired pneumonia are most commonly prescribed in the form of injections for intramuscular or intravenous (in particularly difficult cases) administration. Although some patients are more like drugs in tablets. The standard course of treatment in any case should not exceed two weeks, but it is forbidden to finish it prematurely.
If the patient's condition does not improve after two to three days after the start of taking antibiotics, and the main symptoms of pneumonia do not disappear, it is necessary to select an alternative antibiotic.