Pharmacotherapy for Pneumonia
Pneumonia is a respiratory condition that results to inflammation of the lung parenchyma. It is mostly caused by infections from microorganisms but it can also be caused by aspiration of foreign bodies into the lung. The bacterial causes include streptococcus pneumonia, which is the most common cause. Others include Chlamydia pneumonia and Mycoplasma pneumonia. Other causes include respiratory syncytial virus, histoplasma capsulatum and parasites such as pneumocystis carinii. A patient who is suspected to have pneumonia may present with fever, cough, running nose, tachypnea, and chest pain. On auscultation the client may have crackles or even wheezing. Chest radiograph will be used to confirm the diagnosis (Rajpurkar et al.,2017).
Pneumonia can be treated with different medication depending on severity of the condition. For patients who have mild pneumonia amoxicillin is given. This are individuals who does not require any hospitalization. Other alternatives of the medication include cefuroxime axetil or amoxicillin/clavulanate (augmentin). For other forms of pneumonia such as the atypical pneumonia caused by the Chlamydia pneumoniae and Mycoplasma pneumoniae, a macrolide antibiotic such as azithromycin is the most appropriate choice to administer or give the patient. (Postma et al., 2015). For other severe cases which require hospitalization maybe due to bacterial pneumonia, parenteral antibiotics such as cefuroxime given 150 mg/kg/24hrs is given. Other antibiotics include cefotaxime or ceftriaxone.
Age is one of the factors that affect the treatment effects on the medication that have been administered. Example, in the case of severe pneumonia where the patient has been hospitalized and parenteral antibiotics such as ceftriaxone is used, the dosage of the drug is greatly affected by age. Adults for example are prescribed 1-2 g every 24 hours while for children it is 50-70 mg/kg/day (not to exceed 2 g in a day) for every 12-24 hours. This medications need to be given with caution and only appropriate doses to reduce adverse reactions.
References
Rajpurkar, P., Irvin, J., Zhu, K., Yang, B., Mehta, H., Duan, T., ... & Lungren, M. P. (2017). Chexnet: Radiologist-level pneumonia detection on chest x-rays with deep learning. arXiv preprint arXiv:1711.05225.
Postma, D. F., Van Werkhoven, C. H., Van Elden, L. J., Thijsen, S. F., Hoepelman, A. I., Kluytmans, J. A., ... & Oosterheert, J. J. (2015). Antibiotic treatment strategies for community-acquired pneumonia in adults. New England Journal of Medicine, 372(14), 1312-1323.
