ABSTRACT
Once penicillin became widely available in the 1940s, the majority of discussion and research in the treatment of pneumonia has focused on antibiotic therapy. Introduction of new antibiotics was usually followed in a few years by the emergence of resistance to that antibiotic. While the expanding range of antibiotic resistance is clearly important, the underappreciated fact is that mortality from community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) has not changed since penicillin was introduced.1 This CAP mortality persists despite the availability of multiple potent antibiotics, although the majority of CAP patients who die are infected with organisms that are still sensitive to commonly prescribed antibiotics.
