Pneumonia: Let's avoid confusion of secondary and primary care issues in pneumonia

doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7551.1214-b

BMJ 2006;332:1214 (20 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7551.1214-b

Letter

Pneumonia

Let's avoid confusion of secondary and primary care issues in pneumonia

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—The editorial by Goossens and Little takes issuewith several recommendations offered in our article on diagnosisand management of pneumonia.^{1 2}

Our article was commissioned as a BMJ Learning module for juniordoctors managing patients admitted to hospital and, consequently,does not attempt to tackle the diagnosis and management of communityacquired pneumonia in primary care. In particular, as regardsmicrobiological diagnostic testing, we discussed only the testsrecommended for patients admitted with pneumonia.

We uphold that the management of community acquired pneumoniain hospital and of lower respiratory tract infections in primarycare are different. The primary care issues raised by Goossensand Little are important and deserve research attention. Equally,a number of areas relating to the diagnosis and management ofpneumonia in admitted patients remain open for debate, includingthe optimal empirical antibiotic choice. More hospital basedresearch in lower respiratory tract infections and community. . . [Full text of this article]

Wei Shen Lim, consultant in general and respiratory medicine

weishen.lim@nuh.nhs.uk, Department of Respiratory Medicine, Nottingham City Hospital, Nottingham NG5 1PB

Zara Hoare, clinical research fellow, University of Nottingham

Department of Respiratory Medicine, Nottingham City Hospital, Nottingham NG5 1PB