Pneumonia, an inflammation of the lungs caused by various pathogens or other factors, is a fairly ancient disease, with evidence of its existence found on Egyptian mummies dating back to 1200 B.C. In the era before the advent of antibiotics, it was estimated that about one-third of people who developed pneumonia would die. Although the advent of antibiotics has significantly reduced the mortality rate of pneumonia, today pneumonia, a common pediatric disease, still kills approximately 1.4 million children each year (99% of these deaths occur in developing countries) and is the number one cause of death in children, so it is not a stretch to call it the number one killer of children. There are various ways to classify pediatric pneumonia, which can be divided into bacterial pneumonia, viral pneumonia, and mycoplasma pneumonia by etiology, with viruses dominating in developed countries and bacteria dominating in China and other developing countries; bronchopneumonia and lobar pneumonia by pathology type, with bronchopneumonia being the most common one in pediatrics, and can develop throughout the year, with more in the cold winter and spring seasons. Malnourished low-weight children with congenital heart disease are more likely to develop it. When pneumonia occurs, the bronchial mucosa becomes edematous and the official lumen narrows, while the alveoli are filled with inflammatory exudates, and when the inflammation increases, the bronchial lumen can be narrowed or even blocked, causing the child to become hypoxic. The child may also have irritability, drowsiness, bulging fontanelle, vomiting and bloating. However, the most common and most important early symptoms are fever and cough. Upper respiratory tract infections such as the common cold are self-curing and are treated symptomatically, such as reducing fever, while pneumonia, which is a lower respiratory tract infection, must be treated symptomatically. Since fever and cough are also commonly seen in the common cold, as a parent without medical knowledge, it is actually difficult to distinguish whether it is a common cold or pneumonia in the early stages of pneumonia based on these two symptoms alone. If the common cold is misunderstood as pneumonia, it is at most one more trip to the hospital, but if the early stage of pneumonia is treated as a common cold and not treated correctly in time, it is more troublesome. Therefore, I suggest that when a child’s fever and cough get progressively worse and his or her general condition gets progressively worse, it is wise to seek medical attention in a timely manner. Generally speaking, if a feverish child is playing and eating without interruption and is in good spirits, he or she can be treated as a cold at home. After the nurse takes the child’s temperature, the doctor will not only look, touch, tap and listen to the child, but also ask the child’s medical history in detail. In addition, blood cell analysis is an essential test, and combined with the doctor’s examination, especially the auscultation of the lungs, the doctor may make a preliminary judgment: if the diagnosis is a cold, you may be sent home, or sent home after the outpatient injection of antipyretic drugs; if the diagnosis of pneumonia is considered, a chest x-ray is usually required. Many parents are concerned about the side effects of X-rays, but the cost of a little radiation damage is worth it compared to the dangerous outcome of a missed pneumonia diagnosis. After hospitalization, there may be further testing, the most valuable of which is pathogenic testing, which may be blood culture sputum culture or throat swab culture. Why is this test most valuable? Because once the culture is positive, for example, for Streptococcus pneumoniae, a drug sensitivity test can be done for Streptococcus pneumoniae and the most sensitive drug can be selected for precise treatment. Some parents do not understand the reasoning, for example, after being admitted to the hospital, due to the love of their children will ask the doctor to use the most expensive and best drugs, in fact, for the treatment, only sensitive drugs are the best, while this drug may not be the most expensive. But the problem is that, for one thing, the pathogenic tests may not always be positive (the rate of positivity is related to many factors, such as whether antibiotics have been applied, the technical level of the hospital, etc.), and for another, even if there are results, it takes time, so how to use the drugs before the results appear? The World Health Organization and many pediatric textbooks recommend penicillin as the first-line drug for pneumonia treatment, but in fact, except for very special reasons (drug sensitivity results suggest that penicillin sensitive or poor can not afford to use anything but penicillin), clinicians will not rashly use penicillin, to our hospital microbiology room in October 2011 antibiotic resistance information, penicillin resistance rate ranked first, the resistance rate of 61%. The resistance rate is as high as 61%. So be sure to respect the treatment recommendations of clinicians and don’t let your own half-understanding interfere with treatment. After all, they deal with pneumonia almost every day, and even in the absence of drug sensitivity results, their empirical use of drugs is more than enough to win and less than enough to lose. It is important to note that the same drug used in two different children may result in inconsistent treatment outcomes because the causative bacteria may not be the same at all, and if one is sensitive to the antibiotic and the other is resistant, it is likely that one will be discharged from the hospital cured while the other continues to be treated. In addition, pneumonia caused by different pathogens has different treatment cycles, such as staphylococcal pneumonia, which is more stubborn and prone to recurrence and complications. The child’s diet should be rich in protein and vitamins, and some children with severe eating disorders may require intravenous nutrition therapy. If you need to switch to oral antibiotics in the later stages of treatment, be sure to listen to your doctor’s instructions, because pediatric medication requires relatively accurate calculations, and a small dosage is not enough to cure the disease, while an excessive dosage may be dangerous. There is a segment often mentioned by old doctors is like this, a patient paid for the medicine, asked the pharmacy how to drink, answer: drink a child (the bottle has a scale, drink a grid of meaning), the results of the patient drank a child on the way home, to home the whole bottle are gone (some users say this is Ma Sanli segment) …… this segment can be a fun. But to really happen in which confused parents, if the child drink an excessive amount of, then no one can be happy out. Usually, if treated promptly, most pneumonia can be cured, but many delayed treatment, or pneumonia caused by refractory drug-resistant bacteria, may have various complications, and may even require surgical intervention, chest intubation to save lives or open chest for lesion removal, which is an outcome no parent wants, but has to be in order to save lives, which is fortunately not very common. Just a quick note about pneumonia vaccines: There are currently two pneumonia vaccines on the international market, a 7-valent polysaccharide protein conjugate vaccine (PCV-7) and an unconjugated vaccine covering 23 serotypes. –This only protects against pneumonia caused by the pneumococcus bacteria and does not make the baby immune to all viruses, since the pneumococcus is only the most important pathogen causing pneumonia, but not the only one. Others, such as viral pneumonia and mycoplasma pneumonia, are not protected by this vaccine.