Pneumonia and bronchiolitis in developing countries

摘要

The WHO has recently updated its guidelines for the management of acute respiratory infections (ARIs) in children. These guidelines include the differential diagnosis of cough and difficult breathing, and separate guidelines for the management of pneumonia, bronchiolitis and asthma. This recognises the core issue behind the study in this edition of Archives by Dr Vishwanath Gowraiah and colleagues from four hospitals in India; that many children who fulfil WHO's traditional criteria for pneumonia (cough and difficult breathing with or without chest in-drawing) have wheezy viral infections. The WHO guideline, contained in the second edition of the Pocket Book of Hospital Care for Children,2 lists the clinical features in favour of pneumonia, bronchiolitis, asthma and other common and less common causes of cough and respiratory distress.