Treatment of Community-Acquired Pneumonia in Korea

ABSTRACT

Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) still remains one of the most important causes of morbidity and mortality. Improving the care of patients with CAP has been the focus of many different organizations, and several guidelines have been published in the United States and Europe. When the patients are treated according to the guidelines, there are beneficial effects in outcome. Empirical treatment should depend on the regional epidemiological information on the pathogen distribution and their antimicrobial resistance. Therefore, the guidelines from other countries could not be directly applied to the treatment of CAP in Korea. Inappropriate empirical treatment has been related with treatment failure. Therefore, physicians should be aware of the recent epidemiological data on antimicrobial resistance of the most common pathogens in order to choose the active agents against pneumococcus and atypical pathogens for the treatment of CAP.