Researchers found that more than 68% of patients in primary care settings with negative chest x-rays were prescribed antibiotics for community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). Two-hundred fifty-nine adults in France with clinically suspected CAP received chest radiography (CR) as part of their evaluations, and 144 (55.6%) had a positive result, according to the study presented in the Annals of Family Medicine. Patients with positive CR had more severe and longer-lasting symptoms—including higher body temperature, faster heart rate, faster breathing rate, more difficulty breathing, and more frequent unilateral chest pain. Yet, antibiotics were prescribed for 142 of the 143 (99.3%) patients with positive CR and 79 of the 115 (68.7%) patients with negative CR (P < .001). The authors note primary care clinicians systematically took positive CRs into account to determine whether to initiate antibiotics, but negative CRs seemed to have less influence on their treatment plans.
Clinical protocol: The study took place from November 2017 to December 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Across the world, 2.5 million people, including 672,000 children, died from pneumonia in 2019. In 2022, the United States recorded 41,108 deaths attributed to pneumonia or 12.3 per 100,000, according to the most recent federal data.