The prevalence of respiratory pathogens in adults with community-acquired pneumonia in an outpatient cohort

Chen, Jing; Li, Xiaoguang; Wang, Wei; Jia, Ying; Lin, Fei; Xu, Jie

Peking University Third hospital is a sentinel hospital responsible for routine surveillance of respiratory tract infections. We conducted a retrospective study of outpatients through routine surveillance with CAP from June 2017 to February 2019 in a fever clinic. The patients were enrolled according to the following criteria. CAP was diagnosed according to the diagnostic criteria of Chinese adult community-acquired pneumonia (2016 edition), developed by the Chinese Society of Respiratory Medicine: (1) fever (a body temperature >38.0°C) or hypothermia (a body temperature <35.5°C); (2) leukocytosis (a white blood cell count >10,000/ml) or leukopenia (a white blood cell count <4000/ml); (3) signs/symptoms of cough, sputum, respiratory symptom aggravation (with or without purulent sputum), chest pain, dyspnea and hemoptysis; (4) chest radiological imaging features such as patchy infiltration, leaf segment consolidation shadow, and interstitial inflammation change (with or without pleural effusion); and (5) signs of lung consolidation or rales on lung auscultation. CAP can be established when excluding tuberculosis, pulmonary tumor, noninfectious pulmonary interstitial disease, pulmonary edema, pulmonary atelectasis, pulmonary embolism, pulmonary eosinophil infiltration and pulmonary vasculitis.