Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is associated with an estimated 1 million hospitalizations per year in the United States and is often treated with antibiotics.
Recognized signs and symptoms include fever, chills, myalgias, increased white blood cell count, hypoxia, cough, rales, sputum production, and lung imaging that reveals infiltrates, opacities or densities.
However, these findings are nonspecific, with pneumonitis, acute decompensated heart failure, pulmonary emboli and bronchitis potentially presenting similarly. This discrepancy begs the question of how many of those 1 million