Current Problems of the Pneumonias

Abstract

Official statistics of pneumonia are approximations that seldom deal separately with specific entities. The incidence of pneumonia in general apparently has not changed much. The death rate declined owing to the cure of pneumococcic infections with antimicrobics. The 50 other kinds of pneumonia provide current problems of statistics, diagnosis, prevention and treatment. The recent discovery of numerous viruses permitted many viral pneumonias to be named specifically. The term primary atypical pneumonia never was appropriate. Prevention of minor viral infections of the respiratory tract would eliminate their pneumonic forms, and lessen the incidence of bacterial pneumonias that they sometimes precede. Commensal gram-negative bacilli and fungi heretofore of little importance and staphylococci have caused increasing numbers of pneumonias in persons debilitated iatrogenically as a result of proper and of injudicious antimicrobic prophylaxis and therapy, ad- renocorticoid therapy and other procedures. Means are needed to forestall weakening of resistance to infection, to improve host-resistance, and to prevent and manage the shock-like reaction that often causes death in pneumonias. Newly recognized kinds of pneumonia caused by microbes, dusts, irritants and some of unknown origin add the the problems of diagnosis, prevention and treatment.