Etiology of community-acquired pneumonia in a population-based study: Link between etiology and patients characteristics, process-of-care, clinical evolution and outcomes

Table 4 Process-of-care of patients with community-acquired pneumonia according to etiologic categories (N° = 390)

Process-of-care	Conventional Bacteria (N = 163)	Atypical Agents (N = 151)	Virus (N = 41)	Mixed Infection (N = 35)	Pvalue^║
Antibiotics prescribed					0.0004
Betalactam	39 (23.9)	33 (22.3)	9 (22.5)	4 (11.4)
Macrolide	3 (1.8)	24 (16.2)	5 (12.5)	3 (8.6)
Betalactam/macrolide	19 (11.7)	5 (3.4)	4 (10)	0 (0)
Fluoroquinolone	99 (60.7)	85 (57.4)	22 (55)	28 (80)
Others	3 (1.8)	1 (0.7)	0 (0)	0 (0)
Taking antibiotics prior to diagnosis	25 (16.1)	27 (18.9)	7 (18)	7 (20.6)	0.9
Appropriate antibiotic therapy according to Spanish guidelines^*	121 (74.2)	89 (60.1)	26 (65)	28 (80)	0.02
Appropriate antibiotic therapy according to American guidelines^*	123 (75.5)	113 (76.4)	31 (77.5)	31 (88.6)	0.4
Antibiotics within 8 hours^†	111 (91.7)	34 (87.2)	8 (61.5)	21 (100)	0.002
Duration of antibiotic therapy after diagnosis, mean (SD), days^‡	10 (2.5)	10.3 (2.1)	10.2 (1.5)	9 (2.6)	0.03
Duration of intravenous therapy after diagnosis, mean (SD), days^†‡	3.2 (3)	2.4 (2.1)	2.5 (1.8)	2.2 (1.4)	0.3

SD = standard deviation.
Data are presented as numbers (percentage) of patients unless otherwise stated. Percentages exclude patients with missing data. Treatment failure, septic shock, and severe sepsis are defined in text.
^*Appropriate antibiotic according to Spanish guidelines (reference 13). Appropriate antibiotic according American guidelines (reference 14).
^† Only for hospitalized patients.
^‡ Inhospital deaths are excluded.
^║ The p-value obtained from the Chi-square or Fisher exact test for categorical variables, and Kruskal-Wallis test for continuous variables.

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