Pneumonia

Injury	Disease	Nutrition	Poison

Symptoms	Surgery	Test	Special Topic

Pneumococci organism

Lungs

Pneumonia

White nail syndrome

Pneumococcal pneumonia

Pneumonia

Alternative Names:

Pneumonitis; Bronchopneumonia; Community-acquired pneumonia
Symptoms:

The main symptoms of pneumonia are:

Cough with greenish or yellow mucus; bloody sputum happens on occasion
Fever with shaking chills
Sharp or stabbing chest pain worsened by deep breathing or coughing
Rapid, shallow breathing
Shortness of breath

Additional symptoms include:

Headache
Excessive sweating and clammy skin
Loss of appetite
Excessive fatigue
Confusion in older people

Signs and tests:

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If you have pneumonia, you may be working hard to breathe, or may be breathing fast. Crackles are heard when listening to your chest with a stethoscope. Other abnormal breathing sounds may also be heard through the stethoscope or via percussion (tapping on your chest wall).

The following tests may show signs of pneumonia:

Chest x-ray
Gram's stain and culture of your sputum to look for the organism causing your symptoms
CBC to check white blood cell count; if high, this suggests bacterial infection
Arterial blood gasesto check how well you are oxygenating your blood
CAT scan of the chest
Pleural fluid culture if there is fluid in the space surrounding the lungs

References:

Marx JA, Hockberger RS, Walls RM, eds. Rosen?s Emergency Medicine: Concepts and Clinical Practice. 5th ed. St. Louis, MO: Mosby; 2002;

Cohen J, Powderly WG. Infectious Diseases. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Elsevier, 2004.

Mandell, GL, Bennett JE, Dolin R, eds. Principles of Infectious Diseases. 5th ed.New York, NY: Churchill Livingstone, 2000.