Diagnosing Community-Acquired Pneumonia in the Emergency Department

While community acquired pneumonia (CAP) is 'bread and butter' emergency medicine, and the diagnosis is often a 'slam dunk', it turns out that up one third of the time, we are wrong about the diagnosis; that x-rays are not perfect; that blood work is seldom helpful; that not all antibiotics are created equal and that deciding who can go home and who needs to go to the ICU isn’t always so clear cut. With this in mind we are taking a deep dive into CAP, from diagnosis to disposition so that we can better achieve our EM goals of stabilizing sick patients, getting the right diagnosis, initiating the best treatment with the information at hand, prognosticating/appropriately deciding on disposition of patients, and being healthcare and antimicrobial stewards...