ABSTRACT
Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a common illness, with an estimated incidence of 2-12 cases/1000 persons/year. Most of these cases are successfully managed on an outpatient basis; however, 20% will still require hospital admission. Severe CAP is considered a distinct clinical entity, which usually requires intensive care unit (ICU) management, has a particular epidemiology, and a somewhat different distribution of etiologic pathogens, compared with the other less severe forms of communityacquired pneumonia. Severe CAP may represent 10% of the total admissions of a specialized ICU (1), and the mortality of these patients is also high. Although less than 5% of outpatients with CAP die as a result of this illness, the meta-analysis performed by Fine et al. (2) found a mortality rate of 36.5% in ICU-admitted CAP patients, with a range of 21.7-57.3%.
