Pneumonia Treatment at the Clínic

Every year the Hospital Clinic, Barcelona admits 500-600 emergency cases of community-acquired pneumonia. Of these, 300-350 are hospitalised for treatment and monitoring, while 100-120 are admitted to the intermediate or intensive care unit of the Respiratory Clinic Institute. 

The hospital has a specific protocol for treatment and monitoring of the patient with a diagnosis of community-acquired pneumonia. The Emergency, Pneumology, Internal Medicine and Infectious Disease departments are all involved in patient care.  

This protocol is applied when a patient is admitted with a diagnosis of community-acquired pneumonia. The first step is to determine the severity of pneumonia by applying the severity scales recommended in the current clinical guides. Then a decision is made regarding where the patient receives treatment; the microbiological diagnostic procedure; and the empirical treatment.  

During hospitalisation, the patient is interviewed as part of the pneumonia protocol to obtain the necessary demographic, clinical, radiographic, microbiological and treatment data. All these data are included in a database that currently holds information from over 10,000 patients from 1997 to the present.  

When the patient is discharged from the hospital, he is scheduled for a specialist pneumonia consultation. During this visit, an analytical check and chest X-ray are performed to assess the patient's status after the pneumonia episode. A recommendation to receive the flu and pneumococcal vaccines is also given during this visit.